


throw your soul through every open door

by effie214



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Kidfic, so much fluff the staypuft marshmallow man is side-eyeing me and saying 'calm down girl'
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-10
Updated: 2015-12-26
Packaged: 2018-01-15 06:00:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 47
Words: 71,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1293982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/effie214/pseuds/effie214
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of short one-shots based on prompts left on Tumblr.  Latest update: five times Oliver cooks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. forget the world now (we won't let them see)

**Author's Note:**

> Since all the cool kids were doing it, here's a collection of short, unconnected one-shots taken from various prompts on Tumblr.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ohmypreciousgirl prompted: "marry me."
> 
> Title from the Train song "Marry Me."

She becomes a walking barometer after she’s shot; she can tell you when it’s going to rain or when the temperature is dropping.

She remembers being shot just fine, thank you very much; she also has the scar — which basically means she doesn’t want or need the pain. 

But it’s there, as it always is some way or another in her life, and she tries to mask it as best she can; that, again, is what she’s supposed to be good at. Oliver, of course, doesn’t buy it — for a terrible liar, he can see through them pretty damn easily — and watches her like a hawk when she starts to rotate her arm or rub at her shoulder. He even pops out to CVS one day, returning with IcyHot and ibuprofen, both of which she keeps in her desk drawer for necessity’s sake and also as a reminder that she’s every inch as bad ass as Sara is, albeit in different ways.

She gets used to the pain, fights through it even though it feels like wading through sand some days. It’s her Lian Yu, in a sense; it’s always there, hovering, waiting. It’s the devil in her, lurking in the shadowy corners of herself.

A few Tuesdays after they take down the Clock King, she wakes before her alarm with a start. Her shoulder’s on fire, and when she tries to rotate it, the pain is so blinding the edges of her vision whiten. She swallows a few times, squeezes her eyes shut as though sheer willpower could make it stop hurting. She does her routine of NSAIDs and patches and heating pads, and by the time dawn has broken, it’s just not cutting it and she’s even closer to tears than she was before.

She texts Digg to ask for one more “aspirin” to try and beat the pain into submission so she can function. Bless him, he’s awake and promises to come by the apartment as soon as he can. She fires off a text to Oliver to let him know she’ll probably be working a half-day — she can sleep off the narcotic she knows was her actual pain reliever — and will hopefully be in by noon.

She’s just settled herself on her couch with her patch and heating pad and delusions any of it will make her feel better when there’s a soft knock at her door. She pads across the small living room and opens the door, jumping back slightly in surprise when it’s Oliver, not Digg, standing on the other side of her threshold. “Uh…hi?”

”Special delivery,” he says, holding out a pill bottle with one hand and a bag from their breakfast place (when did she start thinking in terms of their and us and we?)

She opens the door and lets him in, tilting her head with a curious look on her face. “How did you —”

"I was coming to check on you and ran into Digg in the lobby." She bites her lip, trying to decide if she should believe him or not, and then decides to let it be. She’s in too much pain to really care. 

She motions to the couch, indicating he should make himself comfortable, and heads to her kitchen to get a glass of water. As she’s turning back to him, she finds herself wondering how he lives with it all the time — not the emotional pain, but the physicality of it; the embodiment. The outside foes they face are strong and dangerous enough, but to have their own bodies turn like them on that? The one thing you’re always supposed to be able to rely on? It can be silent and deadly, a ticking time bomb of sorts, one with no prior warning as to when it’s going to explode. 

He really is a hero.

She joins him on the sofa, curling her feet beneath her and smiling as he hands her one of the pills. She takes it quickly, and then leans back against the couch, head tilted back and eyes closed. She feels a tentative hand on her thigh, and she turns her head to look at him. His hand moves from her arm to the crown of her head, smoothing down her hair before cupping her cheek. Like that night at the foundry, she turns into his touch, but she can feel the hesitation, the guilt, in the touch, and shakes her head. “I’m fine, Oliver. I am fine.”

"You almost weren’t." There’s something hollow to his tone.

"My life, my choice, remember?"

"And now your consequences."

She lifts her good shoulder in a shrug. “I’d do it again. For any of you. We’re a team. A family.”

He goes somewhere then, eyes fixated on a spot on her opposite wall, and she watches him for a minute, wondering where he is and who’s with him. The intensity in his eyes is different when he looks back down at her; it’s the Count and his office and making choices all over again.

He’s looking at her like she shouldn’t ever have to make that kind of decision, that he doubts she’d always choose him. 

Always. It’s as certain as she can be in this these masks, these war zones with their ricochets.

She starts to feel tendrils of the medicine working, weaving ribbons through her system as easily as Oliver is sliding his hands through her hair. She sighs deeply in relief; the shooting pain is gone, though a low throbbing remains. It’s light years from where she was an hour ago, so she’ll take it. She settles more firmly against his side and he folds his arm around her — because of the life that I lead seems a hundred second chances ago when her head is on his shoulder; it’s a pause and a hand is hovering over the reset button — and she picks up her remote, fishing through her DVR selections. 

She sort of forgets what she picks to watch, because the “aspirin” kicks in full force and she can finally breathe normally again, be normal again. It’s a fleeting state of grace, but she’ll believe it, disappear within it, for as long as she can.

Oliver’s oddly tactile this morning, and she makes herself sink into it unquestioningly, just as the pain relief is cushioning her. He is titanium most days, unbendable and unbreakable, and she cherishes the moments where he softens and lowers his walls enough that she can peek over them. Her eyes slide shut as his hands stroke her hair lightly, and he moves to rub her temples. 

Staccatoed pictures click through her mind; Digg driving them home the night she got shot, Oliver insisting on crashing on her couch, his fingers in the same place when the rebound headache from the narcotic set in. (Even when they win, they don’t.) That he remembers — cares enough to do it again — has her releasing a contented sigh, then a groan before a breathless, “Marry me.”

His hands still for a microsecond, and she makes a frustrated noise in the back of her throat. She feels more than hears his chuckle, focuses on his heartbeat strong and steady in a world where she feels so off-kilter all the time, and smiles when he moves his hand to her arm, rubbing up and down softly. “You just want me for my massages.”

"Your face doesn’t hurt, either," she says, pursing her lips as she shifts against him, trying to get more comfortable (as if it were possible.) Her eyes are still shut, so she misses the flash of something that crosses his face that holds a hint of tomorrow, a harbinger of things to come. 

"Beauty fades," he teases gently.

"Your bank account doesn’t."

"I see how it is. Looks and money."

"Pretty good five-year-plan," she replies. Her voice grows smaller, contemplative, when his hand moves to her back and rubs it with broad strokes. "Oliver?"

"Hm?"

"What do you think of my scar?"

"I think it needs to be the last one you get," he replies quickly, hoarsely.

She nods seriously in agreement, then smiles lazily as she feels herself drifting towards sleep. “Oliver?”

She can’t note the smile in his voice, but somehow always remembers it being there. “Yes, Felicity?”

"Will you be here when I wake up?"

He presses a kiss to the crown of her head. “Sleep, Felicity.”

She does, and just as she’s dozing off, he whispers, “I promise,” and over the years, it’s that promise, not the oxycodone, that soothes her pain most.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This work may NOT be cross posted/uploaded to any alternate sites (such as GoodReads or Ebooks-tree) without the express written permission of the author.


	2. heaven or hell (or somewhere in between)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> andymcnope prompted: "join me."
> 
> Title from The Civil Wars' "C'est la Mort."

He politely declines Isabel’s offer to join her for lunch, making a seemingly unhurried exit and heads to the elevators. In actuality, he can’t wait to get back to his room and shed his CEO persona, that real world mask that weighs far heavier than the one he actually dons.

(He is so much more than that mask, though; more than the arrows or the personal crusade that’s turned into a team effort. 

It used to be about the life he led. Now it’s about the one they’re building together.)  
He sighs quietly as the elevator rises, checking his watch and scrubbing at his face a little bit. Unfortunately, together is not something that’s applicable to him right now; he’s in Moscow for acquisition meetings and she’s back in Starling, manning her old post in the IT department — the balance they keep between their distance during 9-5 and their proximity from 5-9 is at once one of the hardest and easiest things he’s had to do — and damn if he doesn’t miss her with a ferocity that stings just as much as his bare knuckles on the punching bag in the foundry.. 

She is where the island ends, and the beginning of a legacy outside his parents’ mistakes and his own nightmares. He’s freer now that he’s fallen — not all the way, but with her wind at his back, the journey isn’t as treacherous as he’d once anticipated, and he finds himself reveling in how she keeps turning to him when all common sense tells her she should run the other way.

Then again, she is the most remarkable person he’s ever met, not common in the slightest. Were he a philosophical man, he could wax poetic about her being a missing puzzle piece, or the element he’d once lost but found again in her. But he deals in blacks and whites, in truth and all her consequences, and it comes down to the simple fact that they are better together. They want to be better together, and are willing to work for it; take the good with the bad, knowing mercy is found in their proximity to one another, whether they’re a fingertip or thousands of miles away. 

The elevator finally dings its arrival on his floor, and he makes his way into his suite, He tosses his jacket over the back of an armchair and loosens his tie with his right hand, fishing in his pocket for his cell with the other. He pulls up her information and requests a FaceTime chat, sitting back on the bed as he waits for her to answer.

Though it’s still before dawn in Starling, there’s a light in her eyes when she appears on his screen. It’s a look he’s come to recognize, a beacon that guides him home, and if he accomplishes nothing else in this life, making Felicity Smoak look at him like that will be his greatest achievement. 

"Hey," she says, voice thick with sleep, a gentle smile on her face.

"Hey," he repeats, smiling as she scrunches her nose up as she yawns. "You sleep okay?"

She nods silently, eyes raking over him as she assesses whether or not he did as well. Truth be told, he’d tossed and turned most of the night, a feeling of something missing ticking loudly within him and keeping him up. Oddly, though, he found some comfort in it; he’d lived his life on someone else’s timetable for so long — listened to the minutes counting down to his destruction instead of measuring the good times — that it still sort of amazed him that it could change so drastically. Had you told him last year that in her absence he’d have to sleep with his feet sticking out from under the sheets because he was so used to the coolness of her feet warming on his calf, he probably would’ve given the same tilted head disbelieving look she'd used on him when they first met. He revels in the normalcy of it all, he supposes; grocery lists with mixed handwriting, toothbrushes sitting side by side, clothing needing to be dry cleaned entwined around one another just as intricately as their owners’ heartstrings — things he not only took for granted while he was on the island, but that he’d never known he wanted until they were given to him.

That’s the other thing that gets him — there are days he doesn’t think he deserves this happiness, that he’s made so many mistakes any other wishes should be left unsaid — and yet, she has had faith in him before even he did. She’d asked him once if she could trust him, and his answer of “you can trust me” was the most honest thing he’d said since coming home. 

And now they’re not only sharing a home, but building one, and perhaps he is a little philosophical (or maybe just slightly sentimental without her heartbeat next to him, beating out a litany of pride and support and love) because there’s a part of him that is thankful for his time on the island, because without it, he wouldn’t have her — and without her, he wouldn’t be himself. 

She pulls her knee to her chest and rests her chin against it, asking after a minute, “So how many levels of Candy Crush did you beat during the morning meeting?”

"You wound me, Miss Smoak."

She grins. “Get back here and I’ll kiss it better.”

He groans a little bit, and infuriatingly (adorably), she smiles even wider.. “Next time just come as my personal IT specialist. Or an assistant to my assistant.”

"I can only imagine what…things…you’d need me to handle."

He shakes his head at her, his own smile belying any actual annoyance. “You’re enjoying this far too much.”

She lifts one shoulder in a playful shrug. “Maybe.” Her expression softens a little bit, and he can hear her picking at her duvet cover. “It’s weird being apart like this.”

He knows (God, does he know); they’ve only been officially together about five months, and this is the first time they’ve been separated. For someone who had planned to do the vigilante thing alone, he now finds the loneliness uncomfortable; ill-fitting, unlike the way his hand fits perfectly at the small of her back. But he finds it to be a necessary evil; she’d been miserable as his EA, and it had gnawed at him how the one person he’d never raise his bow against had been injured by him all the same. He’d drawn her into his world and then realized he wanted to give it all to her. He wants her, above all, to be happy, and if that requires a little sacrifice and Googling time differences to schedule morning chats, he’ll do it. He gives her a gentle smile and says, “Just a few more days.”

She nods and yawns again, hiding it halfway behind her hand, and he tries to ignore the niggle of discomfort at the bareness on her left hand. Instead, he says, “Why don’t you fly out and meet me? We’ll make a long weekend of it.”

She smiles slowly. “I don’t know. My boss is a hard-ass. He might not let me come.”

He’s not sure if that’s meant to be an innuendo or not; either way it sets off cascading memories in his senses — so much so that his own hand grips the comforter beneath him, remembering how it feels to draw lazy patterns against her skin, and he swears he can smell the citrus of her shampoo. He tries — failing spectacularly, of course; it’ll be those images and not wrapped sweets he’ll disappear into during the afternoon session — to blink them away, continuing, “What about London? I’ll meet you at Heathrow.”

She nods, the light in her eyes somehow impossibly brighter, and he breathes it in just as he sighs promises against the crown of her head as she falls asleep with her head on his chest. “I think I can squeeze you in.”

The wink lets him know that was an innuendo, and he just shakes his head again. She’s the most extraordinary thing to ever happen to him, this seemingly plain-Jane IT girl, and it’s as wonderful as it is maddening. “I’ll have Shannon make the arrangements.”

"Speaking of, she’s going to come looking for you if you don’t get back down there."

He glances at his watch and sighs quietly, knowing she’s right, and appreciates the gentleness in her tone when she continues, “I’ll talk to you during my lunch hour.”

"It’s a date," he says, standing and reaching for his suit jacket. "Have a good morning."

"Love you," she replies, and he disconnects, walking back toward the elevator with renewed drive to get these talks done so that he can concentrate on the important things, like how his name from her lips is a rebirth and faith — heavenly deliverance for someone who’s spent far too much time in purgatory.


	3. look around your world pretty baby (is it everything you hoped it'd be?)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys have to be so sick of me at this point. I'm so sorry.
> 
> Prompt from andymcnope: amuse me.
> 
> Title from Del Amitri's "Roll to Me."

Rule number one to being Oliver Queen's jill-of-all-trades, Felicity learns early on, is to keep the wine glass (mostly) full. 

(Mostly being the operative word, of course; the man has more money than God and Warren Buffet put together, and after three years at his side, she deserves to let him spoil her with a bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape every now and again. She thinks of it as a well-earned job perk.

It goes without saying that seeing him naked in her bed, head pillowed on his right arm with his left stretched protectively around her waist, is an even better bonus.)

Tonight, though, she sips her Malbec both because it's heaven on her tongue and because she just can't school her features nearly as well as he can, and hiding behind her glass is the only way she can pretend she's not laughing.

She shouldn't be; she  _knows_ she shouldn't be, but the look on his face as he schmoozes investors and board members, pulling that playboy smile he once tried on her, desperately trying to look interested, is hilarious in its bored disdain.

(She takes a moment to revel in the fact that she can not only identify which expression he's throwing at her [indulgent smile, amused smile, hungry-please-remove-all-your-clothing-posthaste-because-not-being-able-to-touch-your-bare-skin-is-second-in-terms-of-hell-on-Earth-only-to-Lian-Yu grin, escape-to-a-halcyon-moment-despite-the-encroaching-shadows thankful smile] but that she seems to be creating even more of them for him to wear.)

She can tell he's failing miserably, but that's simply because she knows the masks he dons like the back of her hand he holds -- not the one he puts on in the foundry, but the ones that represent this tenuous balancing act; this pendulum in constant motion even as he tries to be the immovable object against everyone else's unstoppable forces. He slides between CEO Oliver Queen and Arrow Oliver Queen, skating a precipice she worries they'll both fall into -- for wherever he goes, there she'll be -- and it's only in the safety of the inky night and her arms that she sees the true Oliver Queen, the man who has struggled to live in this second life, the healing man who would break a hundred times in a hundred different ways if it meant protecting those he loves, the man whose kiss and promise of tomorrow still linger on her lips even as she vacillates between which one defines them best. 

(Tonight, it's the latter, and contains the gratitude they have for the coming of the dawn, the light of a new day, because they both realize they've been one breath away from one last chance too many times for comfort, and they're thankful for the fact that  _maybe_ didn't turn into  _never._ )

He counts his days in failures and losses while she quietly shores up the cracks in their meandering path; he takes care of everyone else so ferociously that she thinks sometimes he forgets he needs to be believed in too. Her strength is quieter than his, but no less strong, and they take turns carrying each other when the world tries to cut them off at the knees.

She never expected to end up here, but somehow now it feels like this is the only place she was ever meant to be.

(Partner is one word that encompasses so many more, including three he whispered against her mouth one night last July as they sat on the QC roof watching fireworks and a future explode against an inky sky.)

He catches her eye from across the room and sneaks a wink in her direction. Her amusement softens into an expression of pride and love, as gentle and fierce as she is. She sees their CFO start to approach with his wife and mouths, "Jennifer."

(Sometimes he saves the city and she helps save him. That he trusts her enough to let her in both parts of his life is oxygen on the days when she can't breathe.)

The smile he gives her is relieved and thankful, and she nods --  _always_ , a black-and-white certainty in a world made of shades of grey -- and she continues to sip at her wine until one of her former colleagues in IT grabs her attention and offers congratulations regarding the simple but flawless diamond on Felicity's left hand. 

Even as she makes light but attentive conversation, she notices when the CFO and his wife move on and Oliver is no longer standing in the same spot as before. 

(Not that this surprises her; she gets the sense he's always been running -- first away from responsibilities and adulthood, then toward another hood altogether. When they'd eventually intersected, these two previously thought parallel lines unknowingly moving at the same pace, they'd skidded to a halt at the resulting crossroads.

She doesn't remember who reached for whom, but the fact that they worked to take that first step together is something she values even more than wine or the safety of his embrace.

Everything goes very quiet in her head when she wonders how still he'll be with a baby in his arms and his own ring reflecting moonlight and the victories instead of the defeats.

There's a part of her that thinks this isn't real, but he might just make her believe.)

She senses him before her peripheral vision alerts her to his approach, and habitually steps back to meet his hand as it falls into its default position at the small of her back. His thumb rubs against the lace overlay of her black cocktail dress in greeting, and he offers a patented businessman Oliver smile at her companion, who returns the gesture and politely excuses herself. Felicity turns into his hand, her fingers running down his lapel a little bit. "You're doing great."

He sneaks a kiss to her temple and rests against her a little bit. She can feel the weariness in his frame, and is -- despite all the things they have done and all the things they have become -- amazed at this marvel of a man whose only easy day was yesterday. "How much longer?"

She shakes her head, mirth dancing across her visage once again. "Is that the CEO version of  _are we there yet_?"

" _Are_ we?" He replies, grinning when she rolls her eyes good-naturedly. 

"Tell you what," she says quietly, barely suppressing the shiver that dances down her spine as his hand skirts across her hip, finger following the pattern laid out on the applique, "give it another hour and I'll let you find out whether or not I've got anything on under this dress."

It takes every bit of self-control she has left not to revel gleefully in the strangled noise that comes from the back of his throat, and it takes her a minute to answer after he bargains, "Thirty minutes."

"Forty-five."

"Done." He steals a quick kiss before approaching an international contingent interested in Far East distribution. She finishes the Malbec and forty-four minutes and thirty-two seconds later takes his proffered hand, running once again into evermore. 


	4. Home With Honor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The POWs have a saying: home with honor. Finally - with her -- he truly knows the meaning of both. (or, Felicity and Oliver look at their wedding photo.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a prompt from lizook (their wedding picture). One bit was inspired by the gloriousness that is ohmypreciousgirl. It's sugary sweet overload because I'm going through some family stuff and needed to be in a happier headspace to deal with it tomorrow. Nevertheless, I sincerely hope you enjoy it, and as always, I'd love to hear what you think.
> 
> By the way, Hildene is a real place in Vermont. My sister got married there about two years ago.

Even now, he can't stop staring at her. 

(It doesn't matter that he's legally allowed -- and expected -- to, but he revels in the thrill of certainty; of tribulations survived turning into lessons learned. He's been forced to endure so much pain for so long, but choosing to be happy with the most remarkable woman he's ever going to know is the greatest thing he'll ever do.

The POWs have a saying: home with honor. Finally - with her -- and after all the battles fought and wars won and lost, he truly knows the meaning of both.

They've sat so long in silence and doubt, and now they stand side-by-side in the one thing that will keep them going during the dark violet hours of the hardest days: faith.)

They're into their new home, a townhouse in the same subdivision where she lived before, and there are boxes and chaos absolutely everywhere. 

(He'd been fine with the idea moving into her place; it was plenty of space and overall just a great house. She'd been adamant, though, insisting this was the new start to the biggest beginning they'd ever have; they'd climbed so many walls to get to this place, and it was time to build something together.

In the end, he's happier not having to see the disapproving look of her next-door neighbor, Mrs. Wright, to whom he'd apologized about 43,000 times for scaring her one night when he'd forgotten his key and decided to parkour his way up the drainpipe to the roof atop the back screened-in porch and to her window to let himself in.)

He smiles widely as she backs up a step onto the bubble wrap that had cushioned the frame she had just put on the mantel, and she jumps in surprise, her hand flying to her chest. He knows how her heart's beating in the aftermath, because her heart is his, and its beat is the cadence to which he plans to walk for the rest of his life. 

(He knows he'd die for her, but more importantly, he'll  _live._ )

He lets out a chuckle, which causes her to whirl, the ends of her loose blonde hair catching in the corner of her mouth. She puts her hands on her hips and arches an eyebrow; he wordlessly steps to her, brushes the strands from her lips with his thumb and bends down to kiss her gently. She hums into the kiss, hooking her fingers in the belt loops on his jeans and when he draws back, her soft smile makes him grin again. 

She shakes her head, her smile contradicting the idea that she might actually be annoyed with him. He kisses her forehead when she slides her arm around his waist, and wraps his own arm around her shoulders when she turns so she's next to him, both looking at the mantel.

The picture she's put up is one of them on their wedding day, some three months before. They're hand in hand, walking away from the tent set up for the reception to steal a quiet moment on a day that had truly been lived out loud. 

 It had been Felicity who turned around first, and something had blossomed in his chest as the light from the setting sun glinted off the rings on her finger, magnified by the fact that even on the most important day of their life, even when they're side-by-side and in perfect step for once, she's still got his back.

(They still have their nights -- and she's said over and again how much she loves spending that time together -- but now they have each other's days and tomorrows, and they emerge from the defining darkness hand-in-hand.

The thought strikes him as he stands at the front of the small church in Manchester that she's been doing that a lot longer than he'd realized, going back to her rebuilding the foundry and somehow, effortlessly and quietly, rebuilding  _him_.

Maybe even longer.

For someone who, for a long while, couldn't tell armistice from war, he is for once not battle weary or dark or defeated. This is his victory, and he will revel in it.

Turns out there  _was_  a choice to make. 

Thank God he made the right one.)

The photographer had snapped a picture when Felicity had looked over her shoulder to locate the source of the shuffling grass behind them, smiling beatifically. He'd kept walking, fingers laced with hers, and he just loved that picture, because of how unabashedly happy she was. It was that look, he knew, that would get him up in the morning.

They'd snuck off to the back garden behind the main house at Hildene, one that opened to a spectacular view of the Green Mountains. In October, the trees lining the hills were breathtaking in their colors, all lines and vibrancy and a little bit of magic -- so much like Felicity. They'd stood at the foot of the small rock wall that protected anyone walking the periphery of the property to slide down the steep hill into the corresponding valley. He'd wrapped his arms around her waist, bending slightly to rest his chin on her shoulder, kissing just below her ear and smiling as she shivered -- it had been unseasonably warm all weekend, perfect for her lace cap sleeves and keyhole back, and that he could do that to her makes him the remarkable one -- until he looked back down at her, of course. 

He'd whispered  _I love you_  against her collarbone, and she'd covered her hands with his. 

He'd stared at her wedding ring for an arguably abnormal amount of time, breathing her  _\-- them_  -- in before saying, "Hard to imagine this all started with a crap cover story and an IT Department."

She'd smiled, her quiet laugh moving his hands as they rested on her abdomen.

(He'd tried not to picture her with their baby growing inside her; tried not to remind himself to ask Thea how to paint nails for the end months when Felicity can't see her feet.

He'd tried, and he failed.)

Her reply had broken him from his reverie. "You're Mr. Queen," she'd repeated, turning her head until her cheek is resting against his chest. 

He hadn't repeated his original reply. Instead, he'd turned her all the way and kissed her gently but meaningfully, and then murmured, "And now you're Mrs. Queen."

She'd laughed heartily, head tipping back and the loose curls she'd let out after removing her veil for the reception, sliding away in solidarity and amusement.

(If it all ends tomorrow, it's the look in her eye when she gazes up at him will make everything he's ever done worth it.) 

Their wedding planner had approached quietly, saying, "Sorry to interrupt, but they'd like to start dinner now."

They'd both nodded, and he took her hand once again when she offered it to him. He'd kept her an arm's length away -- probably more, to tell the truth -- and now she was - and, amazingly, by choice -- less than one breath away. Permanently, in a world he knows is not.

(They'd both seen and done extraordinary things, but the fact that she'd said  _'til death do us part_  and  _meant_  it with the huge heart she has is the greatest thing he will ever achieve.)

They'd dined and danced until about 3 AM and went back to the private house across from the main hotel at Hildene. She'd taken her shoes off somewhere after they cut the cake, and as they walked down the hill to their accommodations, he'd picked her up in a fireman carry so she wouldn't have to put them back on, nor would she have to walk on the gravel. 

"My hero," she'd murmured, cupping his cheek.

"Yours," he'd confirmed before opening the outer door to the house and placing her on the entryway carpet. The wedding planner's assistant had dropped the key under the welcome mat so Oliver wouldn't have to look after it during the reception, and he'd craned his head to look up at Felicity when she started rubbing soothing circles across the expanse of his back. He'd stood quickly, grabbing her by the waist and swallowing her surprised "eep!" with a kiss. 

"Inside," she'd whispered, and something in him stirred when he'd realized she wasn't talking about the house.

(Hilariously, though, because they've never lived by other people's rules and expectations, she'd returned from hanging up her wedding dress to find him sound asleep on the bed.

He'd get to see the specially chosen green lingerie ensemble -- she'd tell him later why she chose it; she'd deliberately avoided wearing the color at either of their jobs, saved it for this very moment -- and he takes his time running his hands across the garter and the thin material covering her stomach, and the beautiful curves of her breasts. 

He will remember that night for as long as he lives, and doesn't feel the least bit guilty that the memories will probably get him through several board meetings.

The most vivid memory of all is him kissing the bullet wound she'd received from the Clock King, and her reciprocating with attention on the scar on his bicep from when he'd rescued her from the Count. Things that could have killed them, but instead ultimately helped to get them to focus on _living._

They are synchronicity, scars and stories, and she knows every word.)

He realizes she's been speaking while he was lost in the newly built section of their foundation, and kisses the top of her head in apology.

"Tuning me out already? That's not a good sign."

"Hm?" he teases, and she swats at his side. 

She huffs out a bemused sigh. "I asked you if you liked that one, or if you wanted to pick another picture instead, like the one where you saw me for the first time."

She'd laughed at the idea of them not seeing each other before the wedding; they'd already  _done_  "for better, for worse; in sickness and in health." Everything else felt like a little like a formality. 

He's known for his poker face, but it had failed him that day. He'd been standing in the garden, heart beating a mile a minute, and heard her approach as her heels kicked against the brick path laid there. She'd put her hands on his shoulders and he'd turned, mouth falling open and eyes wide as he took her in. 

(He still remembers the first time he'd seen her dressed up; the Dodger case. He hadn't believed what he was seeing. 

This moment multiplied that tenfold, and there had been a part of him that wanted to do her victorious fist bump. Instead, he just drew her to him, murmuring  _you're so beautiful_ against her temple, rubbing her mostly bare back and counting down the minutes until she would feel the platinum band on his hand all over her skin.)

Finally, he shakes his head and then motions to the picture she’d just placed. "I like that one."

She smiles and then checks her watch. "It's past six. Are you hungry?"

"I think the dishes are in the guest bathroom," he says and she just looks at him for a minute.

"Of  _course_  they are," she eventually says. "Why wouldn't they be?"

"Maybe the movers --"

"If you say they think out of the box, Oliver Queen, I will divorce you tomorrow."

(They end up ordering pizza and sitting cross-legged on their living room floor, lighting a few candles -- why she can find those and not the necessities like dishes is a mystery she forgoes trying to solve, because it just somehow feels _right_ \-- -- and drinking the housewarming present Thea had dropped off earlier.

And two years later, in the frame on the mantel, it'll be a sonogram that makes him smile.)

 fin


	5. colorblind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Felicity/Oliver-it's her time of the month and he knows her well enough to know how to soothe her (*cough*back massage*cough*)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For ladychi, who wanted comfort fic, and Liz for being the worst person ever (by which I mean she is the best person ever). Established Oliver/Felicity, because I like to and I can. Girly things talk/schmoop tw.

Her sigh curls against the master bedroom ceiling of her townhouse as the down comforter and equally plush pillows settle familiarly around her. Her bones are weary and her lids heavy as they slide against the still-risen sun beyond the shades she's pulled shut, but she's not focused on the day still blazing beyond. In fact, she's not focused on much beyond being in her most comfortable pair of pajamas (which may or may not consist of a pair of Oliver's athletic shorts and a far-too-big-for-her Seattle Mariners t-shirt she'd gotten him for Hanukkah the previous year and then promptly stolen -- hey, it wasn't  _her_  fault his clothes were so much more comfortable than her own) or the heating pads perched both behind her (where his absent hand should've been, she thinks grumpily to herself) and on her torso. 

Her phone, tablet and laptop lay momentarily ignored on various surfaces around their bedroom as she shifts against the luxurious fabric that covers the bed -- one of the few times she'd allowed Oliver to spoil her a little bit (outside of electronics, anyway; hey, even she has standards, and, double hey, dating a billionaire  _should_  have perks) -- and her hand lies beneath the covers on her right thigh, meticulously checking her protection for the day.

(To think there was a time talking about her bed, Oliver and protection all in one sentence would've set a blush to her cheeks as vibrant as the Rosier she's enjoyed on occasion.

She has no comment on the allegation she may have held that same hand a little to the left a few times with the same picture she has now in her mind -- chiseled jaw, eyes that sometimes hold more answers than questions, abs that she thinks all faiths can agree are a religious experience -- and that her groans then were not made of the discomfort that is the explosive behind the noises currently detonating from her mouth.)

She's got a pad on and a tampon in, and yet she's still thankful for the dark navy of the sheets on which she lies; her cycle has always been heavy, and the one thing her father  _did_  leave her with -- a blood clotting genetic defect -- makes it more dangerous for her to be on birth control, so there's no chance for medicine to alter it. Instead, it's five days of Aleve and heating pads, and in the last year, Oliver to help her through.

(She still laughs when she thinks of the first time he'd realized she was an  _actual_  girl this  _actually_ happened to. Digg had rolled his eyes and muttered, " _How_  many women have you been with?" and she'd laughed so hard she'd doubled over at the small sink in the foundry where she'd been washing the blood off her hands. Oliver, of course, had rushed to her and worried she'd somehow been injured, and had literally stopped in his tracks and stubbed his toe on the iron shelf adjacent to the bathroom when he'd seen the Tampax box.

Around the same time the next month, though, she'd been touched to find a bag of Hershey's Kisses next to her work station in the foundry -- as well as four brown paper grocery bags full of every feminine product on the market. )

It shouldn’t touch her as much as it does that he makes the grocery store runs at two in the morning, traversing the aisles similar to the one she will one day walk down to get to him, but it does, because she would completely understand if he wanted nothing to do with blood ever again.

For her, though, he is many things, and one of them is colorblind.

(She finds out later he'd done the same thing for Thea rather retroactively, but never unnecessarily; he'd been on the island when she was a girl becoming a woman, and despite what has transpired, she is still his sister, and he will be here for her because of the times he was not.

It's the same for Felicity, and she thinks it makes both her and Thea love Oliver more.)

She hears the click of the lock over the soft tones of a Discovery Channel documentary, and sits up quickly, hand reaching for the Taser Oliver insisted she keep in the bedside table even after he moved in. Her fingers drop and finally, a tired smile pulls at her lips when he hears him call from the small foyer by the front door. "It's just me."

The sounds of home fall around him as he enters, the tall layout of the house echoing and encompassing his presence just as his person does when they're together; the clank of his keys in the blue hand blown glass dish they'd gotten in Greece the summer before, the dull thud of his shoe hitting the wall as he toes it off, the rustle of fabric as he discards his suit jacket all tell her he's arrived home early from his trip. He brings his overnight bag up the two small flights of stairs to their bedroom, setting it in the corner before leaning over to give her a kiss.

He answers her unasked question before she can even open her mouth, and despite her physical discomfort, she smiles wider at the familiarity and his scent as it washes over her. "Caught an earlier flight."

"How'd it go?" she asks, nimble fingers undoing his cuff links and then adjusting her heating pad, watching him in her periphery as he slides the pinstripe shirt off his frame.

(She silently loves that despite all their yesterdays and the promises of tomorrows, there's still a little thrill that shoots through her at the fact that, despite everyone else's assertions, he is never out of sight or out of mind.

She has always seen him, will always find him, and the biggest thing they've survived is the fact that for him, the same is true of her.)

"We'll see," is his noncommittal answer, and he pulls on his sweats before making his way to his side of the bed. He pulls the duvet back and slides in, reaching for her. She slides against his bare chest, eyes sliding shut as his hands start to work at her neck muscles.

(She kind of loves that he doesn’t ask how she is. He just knows.

There are few things that make her feel better on these days.

He is all of them.)

He's beyond silent when he does this for her, so different than the other times his hands are on his skin -- in sickness and in health (given their close calls, for as true as it might be, _til death do us part_  is still a little too raw to think about some days) - so focused on taking hands that so often hurt and making sure that this time, they heal. She feels the broken skin on his knuckles as it trails down her spine, thumbs alternating and relaxing her muscles, and she makes a mental note to tape his hands better the next time he boxes using the dummy; feels the calluses from the sparring sessions with the yantok on the palms of his hand jump across the constellation of freckles in the middle of her back. His index and middle fingers circle in matching patterns, spreading out across her back and back in again, going to the edge but always coming right back to center – just like the promise he’d made to her a hundred times with his words and his eyes – and she can feel the rest of her body start to relax, the tension that kept her so uncomfortably wound ebbing away. 

The funny thing is that she doesn't quite remember how they figured out that him giving her a back massage helped her so much during her period. It's just one of those things that seems to have sprung into being; Athena from Zeus -- powerful and yet comforting, serene. What she appreciates most, though, is the fact that in spite of his purgatory, her own hell, and this rabbit hole she joined him in because they should never, ever be alone in the depths of it, he treats this like  _it_  is his mission; that her five days a month of being miserable are indeed the apocalypse breathing ash as it approaches, because it affects her, and therefore, it affects  _him._ It's a big deal because they  _make_ it one; there are no utterances of "in the grand scheme of things," because here, there is nothing grander -- nothing more important -- than taking care of each other.

(He cares because she does, and vice versa. And as in all things, they are in this together.

A team.

Sometimes you need an arrow to an extremity. Sometimes you need a hypothetical 40-bit encryption key.

And sometimes all you need is a hand to hold.)

She reaches around and captures his wrist gently, bringing his knuckles to her lips and kissing them in silent but profound thanks. She hums low in her throat when he nuzzles the spot at the back of her neck in reply, and he rests his fingers carefully atop the heating pad still on her abdomen, cocooning her in safety and warmth. His right hand goes back to rubbing the tension out of her, and when he's done a few minutes later, he threads his fingers gently through her hair, laughing, as he always does, when she squirms beneath him as his breath hits the cartilage bar.

(He was all half-truths and lies for so long. She was never that stealthy, but she still loves the fact that he knows all her secrets.)

She's relaxed enough to reach for her phone and start thumbing through the emails that have piled up since she took a half-day -- she never thought she'd miss being his EA or dislike being back in IT, but having to answer to a supervisor other than Oliver is something that is something she's having a lot more trouble getting used to, so the fact that he’s _here_ (and he’s so, _so_ here) is something she hopes he hears in her quiet, content sigh -- and she wordlessly hands him the remote so he can find the hourly airing on "SportsCenter" as they break down the Sox versus Yankees weekend series.

Outside, the world still turns.

Inside, everything in her own is, for the moment, steadfast and still, and just right.

fin


	6. yours and mine and ours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From a kidfic meme on Tumblr. Prompt: I told you we should have gotten that German Shepherd puppy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys must be so sick of me by now. I'm so sorry. I hope you enjoy nonetheless.

It’s half past…she squints at the clock, having discarded her glasses in the wake of a pounding migraine 444 stomped feet ago…four hours since they  _all_  should have been asleep, and at this point, Felicity is about  _thisclose_  to just curling up with her overexhausted toddler on the ground and screaming alongside the epic meltdown that has been raging like the storm that had cut off Abby’s weekly Skype date with her Auntie Sara.

Felicity loves weekly Skype dates with Auntie Sara, and she’s not above admitting that a good portion of her reasoning behind insisting on quality time with her daughter’s godmother is because it allows her to shower for more than two minutes and, on days made of sunshine and unicorns and miracles, allows her to make herself an honest to God sandwich and not just munch on leftovers Abby’s left on her plate. Thankfully, Sara knows and understands her ulterior motives, and only judges Felicity a little for them. But she amuses their towheaded, big-eyed girl — because  _his_ and  _hers_  never compared to  _theirs_ in the beginnings or the ends — with stories and flashlight finger puppet shows and Lord only knows what else, and Felicity makes sure she takes time as she luxuriates in water that has actually had time to warm up to be thankful that though her own Smoak history is about as clear as the steam that fills her bathroom, Abby still has more family than she knows what to do with.

Not that the pontificating is helping her now. Abby’s in what Oliver once called Hulk mode, which would make Felicity laugh again right now if she weren’t so tired and frustrated she’s afraid  _she_  might break down, rigid and red faced and crying and just  _done._ They’ve tried explaining. They’ve tried bribing. They’ve tried cajoling. They’ve tried distracting. They’ve tried walking and bribing again and there was even a discussion about whether or not they should just drive around Starling in circles to see if the smoothness of the road journey would soothe her just enough into sleep, but that discussion had been tabled when Felicity pointed out she and Oliver were both so tired  _they’d_  probably doze off first. 

Oliver is steadfast but equally helpless beside her, and she just wonders how on earth they thought they’d manage to be good at this.

They’ve survived death a hundred times, but being responsible for a life just seems beyond her some days.

His hand is rubbing the back of her neck, and she’s not sure if he’s trying to soothe himself or her or Abby by proxy, and she leans into the touch, eyes slipping shut and a tear escaping traitorously. He folds her into him  and she just breathes against his collarbone; she just takes a minute, takes his strength — or tries to, anyway.

It goes very, very quiet in her head — and then she realizes it’s gone very, very quiet in the house.

She opens one eye, heart thudding against hope, and finds that Abby has curled up in the middle of the living room floor, thumb in her mouth, sound asleep.

She and Oliver don’t move. .They literally hold their breath, and as they do — better when they’re together — stand their ground. 

He goes to open his mouth, probably to ask if they should put a blanket on top of her, and Felicity shakes her head so hard the end of her ponytail smacks him upside the jaw. 

The next time Auntie Sara Skypes, Felicity debates whether or not to mention the fact that she and Oliver stood there, absolutely unmoving, for more than half an hour — not staring at the bright spot they’d somehow managed to bring into what had once been a very grey world as they once had — but out of fear that the Kraken might awaken again.

(She  _does_  mention it, and this time when Sara disappears, it’s because she’s fallen off her bed laughing.)

 


	7. welcome to your life (there's no turning back)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "Rrgh. I dunno. Could we just sand down all of the sharp corners? Would that be possible?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from "Everybody Wants to Rule the World."

 

Moira Queen wishes she could say she hasn’t seen Felicity Smoak this flustered before.

 

But Moira Queen is trying to reform, and lying is sin number one, so, sadly, she can’t.

 

She’d thought for a long time that they’d never see eye-to-eye, even with all the help from Felicity’s impressive footwear collection. But for as much as Moira likes to move her chess pieces around the board just so, she still has to acknowledge gamesmanship, and when she’d realized Felicity  _wasn’t_  playing a game — that she really  _did_  care for Oliver (and not just in a way Moira could exploit, for which she will apologize for the rest of her life for even when she lacks the words — in offering the first cup of coffee after a fresh pot has been made, in loaning Felicity the first pair of earrings Robert ever gave her, smaller than the other pieces in the vault but her favorite because  _he was_ , in crying in a wedding boutique when Felicity tried on her gown for the first time, never replacing Danielle Smoak but being honored to stand in for her in the moment Felicity allowed her to) — she’d started to see that the younger blonde was far, far more than the nervous, babbling, sometimes ill-timed assistant.

 

She challenged Oliver; put him in his place when she needed to, and guided him the rest. She was fierce; in her family, in her work, in trying to heal what had been broken before she’d even arrived. Moira thought she saw pieces of herself in the younger woman, though admittedly, there had been cracks in that reflection of hers for some time; she was dogged, almost blindingly so, but always well-intentioned. She always did what she thought best, and in the ashes of the aftermath of a miscalculation, she managed to remain strong even in her vulnerability.

 

The one thing they do not have in common, however, is how Felicity  _hopes._ Oh, how she hopes; in spite of rhyme and reason and all evidence to the contrary, Felicity just  _believes._

 

Looking at her now, standing in what will become the nursery to her first child, utterly overwhelmed but still steely in her determination, Moira thinks that may be the one thing that saves them all. 

 

She has to smile to herself as she watches Felicity glance between four parenting books, all open to their respective chapters on babyproofing. She’s worrying her wedding band around her slim finger as she reads, the diamond band throwing arced prisms off the pale yellow walls. It reminds her of Oliver’s room when he was small, and her expression turns wistful as she remembers. She’d insisted on decorating it herself, much to the horror of her mother-in-law — though the Deardens came from money, they were nothing compared to the Queens, and despite cotillion and Sarah Lawrence and nary a hair out of place for more than twenty years, Moira had just never been good enough. 

 

(It eats at her to realize she’s made Felicity feel the same, and she glances down at the small bag at her feet. It’s everything to her, everything she has to give, and it will probably never be good enough.

 

Still, though, for the first time in a long time, she hopes, and until the day her grandchild is born — and the one that comes after — that’s the greatest gift Felicity has given her.)

 

She finally clears her throat gently, trying not to startle the increasingly flustered woman. She does anyway, just a little bit — baby steps for all of them, it seems — and she still sees the trace of panic that flits in Felicity’s gaze when she speaks. “Oh, Moira, I’m sorry! I didn’t see you there.”

 

The older woman smiles genuinely, waving away Felicity’s concern and trying to put her at ease. “Quite all right, dear. How’s it going?”

 

Felicity surveys the room. The convertible crib is a deep cherry wood, and Moira idly wonders if her grandchild will follow in its aunt’s footsteps and gnaw the rails as she teethes. Hanging above is Moira’s own gift, a hand-blown glass mobile of stars, and in the corner, a glider and footrest big enough, she guesses, to fit mother, father and baby comfortably. 

 

"It’s…going," she finally answers, still working her hand nervously. 

 

Moira pauses for a long minute, then puts a halting but warm hand on her daughter-in-law’s shoulder. “You’re going to do fine,” she says softly. “You’re going to do  _beautifully._ ”

 

Felicity swallows, and Moira can almost see the gears turning swiftly in her head. “There’s just so much to  _do_. I just don’t think I’m ever going to be ready.”

 

"Can I let you in on a little secret?" The irony of the phrase does not escape her, nor does it Felicity, but this is not the time or the place, and when the other woman nods, Moira finishes, "You will  _never_  be ready. I’m still not.”

 

Felicity tilts her head a little bit in questioning. “Oliver’s a wonderful man,” Moira says, glancing down at her own wedding ring; she still wears it because her first vow was and will always be to her family, and despite the mistakes she’s made, the lies she’s told, that’s one truth that has never tarnished. “And I think we both know you had more to do with that than I did.”

 

Felicity moves to interrupt, but Moira shakes her head minutely. “I still wonder who he’s going to become, and I still want all the world for him. But you’ve already had so much to do with giving him that, Felicity; you’ve given him the start I should’ve at the beginning. And that’s how I know you’re going to be a wonderful mother. You and Oliver together….you’re a force of nature, and this child — this  _family_  — is lucky to have you.”

 

She’s not sure she’s ever been so honest, certainly not with Felicity and probably not with herself, and she wonders if this is what salvation feels like; if this is what Oliver felt when he was rescued, first off the island, and then by the remarkable woman standing next to her. A tear pricks the side of her eye and she tries to laugh it off. “Oh, don’t mind the sentimental old bat behind the curtain.”

 

Felicity, bless her, won’t let her. “Thank you,” she whispers fiercely, grasping her hand tightly. “ _Thank you_.”

 

Moira breathes deeply — freely for the first time in a long time, she thinks — and clears her throat before reaching for the bag she’d left sitting in the doorway. “I brought something for you. Well, for the little one. It’s not much, but…”

 

Felicity pulls out the well-loved, much-mended brown bear and lets out a watery half-sob, half-chuckle. “Henry,” she whispers, clutching it to her chest. “Oliver said he lost it.”

 

Moira blinks away her own tears, swallowing a few times to compose herself, the moment bittersweet in knowing Felicity already knows all of her son’s history as well as his future; it’s a hello and a goodbye all in one. “Robert…was hard on him. We both were. I think part of the reason he was the way he was before the…” she motions with her hand because everything her son’s endured is the one thing her mind can’t comprehend, “was because he was so sensitive when he was younger, and Robert equated that to weakness. He indulged him later, surely, but,  _oh_  the number of times Robert told him to be a man.” She shakes her head, remembering fierce arguments around the kitchen island after the children had gone to bed, before she’d become the shell of whatever she was. “He was too old to sleep with a bear,” she finishes, rubbing a gentle hand over the worn fur. “So he said he lost it. I never told Robert about the times I’d check on Oliver and find Henry right next to him.” She smiles unevenly. “And now he’ll look out for your baby. Queen family tradition.”

 

Felicity starts a bit, but not at her mother-in-law’s words. Instead, eyes wide and smiling, she swiftly moves Moira’s hand to her stomach. The matriarch waits, and as she feels her grandchild kick in apparent approval and thanks, she passes that title on as well.

 

 

****


	8. the joy in the mending

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "Mondays are your diaper days."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from Snow Patrol's "New York."

The minute Charlotte is born and placed in her arms, Felicity looks up at him and whispers, “I don’t ever want to do anything else.”

He understands completely.

 

He is in awe of the tiny creature in front of him — and of the woman holding the greatest thing he’ll ever do in his life, who today became even more of a titan in his eyes than she already was — and has to wait a few minutes to hold his daughter because his hands are shaking so badly. The nurse places Charlie in his arms — that nickname will stick for the rest of her life, much to her chagrin, but only Oliver is allowed to use it and she never stops smiling when he does — and he looks between the OB/GYN staff and his wife to make sure he’s doing it right.

What  _it_  encompasses, he’s not sure exactly. Holding her, changing her, feeding her, parenting her. All of the above. 

He has no experience with babies; there had been nannies and Raisa and general youthful disinterest on his part. But he’s never wanted to do anything more right in his life. He’s had to learn, to adapt; it’s how he’s survived. How he’s saved people; maybe even himself, finding some of the pieces that had been lost along the way.

But he’s not trained for this sort of mission, this encompassing need to protect her — the one he feels in his weary bones, even more than he does for her mother, and he doubts there’s anyone who could teach him. They’re going to have to do this the hard way, by trial and error, by truth and consequences, and as Charlie slides a hand around his finger and squeezes, he realizes the one thing he  _does_  know how to do is love her, and he promises they’ll figure the rest out together.

Together turns out to be the operative word.

Oliver Queen becomes a stay-at-home dad. 

It has nothing to do with the money; Charlie’s great-great-great-great-great grandchildren won’t have to work if they don’t want to. Felicity still does, doing security consulting work with Digg and Sara at a company the former set up after Slade was finally, painfully defeated. But for all that he’s moved over the years, all the living he’s had to do to remind himself he’s alive, it’s in being with Charlotte that Oliver finally understands why he survived at all.

There was a time when he didn’t think he had any, and he’s not going to squander what he’s been given again.

He loves seeing the world through her eyes in part because he understands the newness; when he’d come back from the island, previously mundane things like traffic or jackhammers or the sound of metal gates on storefronts being rolled up in the morning had taken on an entirely different tilt and meaning. 

(He swears she snuggles him a little tighter when they’re at the park down by the waterfront and the foghorns sound in the distance, like she knows the noise still makes his heart race a little faster. 

He holds on to her as fiercely as he ever does then, kisses Felicity when she’s with them, and while it’ll never be okay, it’s at least a little bit better.)

There’s just nothing better than seeing her light up at the world around her — it’s fitting, given how she and her mother illuminated some very dark places within him.  It’s fascinating to him, rejuvenating in a way. Uplifting. 

Hopeful, that most dangerous of words.

Everything is big again, an experience. He’s not ashamed to say he took a picture of the first time she discovered she had toes and happily gnawed on them while he FaceTimed Felicity so she could see it live and in living color. He caught her on her first step and trip, was the recipient of her first baby high five — even if Felicity maintains for the duration of their marriage that she has eternal winning privileges because Charlotte’s first word was “mama” — and he’s the one that kisses the boo-boos, makes her lunch, sings along with the damn songs on the kids channels even when she’s napping. 

And today, he’s the one that has her in the swings at the park, waiting for Felicity to arrive for a little stolen quality time during the workday.

Even on their worst days — which, for once in his life, don’t outnumber the good — he wouldn’t have it any other way.

She’s a little more than a year old now, with just enough blonde hair on her head for a Pebbles Flinstone type hairdo, held in place by a TARDIS blue bow because his wife, is, well, his wife. Charlotte’s grinning cheekily up at him, her top and bottom front teeth in full view as she scrunches up her face because she knows it makes him laugh.

(It’s gotten to the point that he doesn’t know if she’s mimicking Felicity, or if he and Felicity have been together so long that their synchronicity has extended to their facial expressions.

It’s a dizzying, circuitous route, but it can’t be all that bad if it ended up here and like this.)

Charlie squeals in the swing and reaches out, and Oliver knows Felicity’s arrived. He matches his wife’s grin as she too does the scrunch-face after kissing him hello,deftly plucking their daughter from her harness. “Well, what do we have here?” She balances Charlie on her hip, right hand tickling the spot of belly that’s exposed as the little girl’s shirt rides up in the movement. “Who does this little girl belong to, hm? I think I might have to take her home with me.”

Charlotte squeals even louder, and Oliver chuckles as Felicity gets it full force in her ear and winces. As he does —  _always_  in this world of potential  _nevers_  — he puts a hand at the small of her back and rubs gentle circles against her black trenchcoat, and she just as instinctively turns into his touch. He leans down and steals another kiss, returning her smile as it rests against his mouth, and then blows a raspberry under their daughter’s chin after he pulls back.  

"You hungry?" he asks quietly, guiding them to a picnic table adjacent to the playground.

She nods, resting Charlie on her lap and smiling her thanks as he passes her the salad she’d requested from the deli around the corner. “It’s been a day.”

He pulls out the Tupperware holding Charlotte’s lunch and slides it toward his girls, uncapping a bottle of water as Felicity opens the container lid one-handed. 

"You want to talk about it?" he asks, unwrapping his own sandwich.

She shakes her head even as something in her peripheral vision catches her attention. He feels his brow quirk in a silent question when recognition seems to settle over her and she chuckles to herself.

She runs a hand over Charlotte’s head and then reaches for him, threading her fingers with his, amusement dancing in her eyes. “The playground moms are checking out my hot husband.”

He’s still stealthy enough to manage a glance without seeming like he’s looking, and sure enough, there’s more of a bit of attention being paid their way. When he looks back at Felicity, though, he has to throw his head back and laugh at the look of absolute  _pride_  on her face; were they in a server room, the victory fistbump of joy would be in full motion. “Jesus, I love you.”

"Damn straight," she replies with a wink and a look of love he’ll never get tired of seeing, and helps Charlotte try a bit of salad using her fork.

( _The Wizard of Oz_  had always been his favorite story as a kid, a black-and-white world exploding into color, and a group of normal people who turn into heroes. 

There was a time after the island that he wondered if he wasn’t the tin man, searching for his heart.

Looking across the table at the woman from his past who had given him the girl from — and dreams for — his future, he knows he’s found it.)


	9. mvp

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "They grow up so fast."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This piece is set in the same 'verse as "nothing comes from nothing (nothing ever could)" and references [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuBDHNU0yzI) scene in 1x15.

Felicity stands in the little shade the maple tree adjacent to Maggie’s soccer field. The eight-year-old is running full-tilt alongside her teammates while her mother tries to wrestle her hair under a hat she’s somehow unearthed from the bottom of a bag because her hair elastic broke. Felicity’s eyes keep moving, though, the master of multitasking; she glances over the field, then to where Amelia is on the bleachers trying to figure out her pre-calculus homework, and as it always feels destined to, end up on Oliver, who is perched on the edge of his folding chair, intent on watching Maggie make a sweet move around the opposing sweeper. 

She glances down at her watch and hopes the tie game is broken soon; they have to go pick Claire up from her voice lesson in time for all three girls to tackle dinner and homework, and if they’re lucky, a good night’s sleep. 

(There are days, she thinks, where she wouldn’t mind trying to hack a federal database or six instead of trying to wrangle her family’s schedule.

There are more days, though, where she wouldn’t trade this for the world.)

There’s a rustle behind her, and it’s not from the leaves on the tree. Being married to Oliver Queen has heightened her senses enough that she turns and evaluates the change in her space in a smooth pivot of which fifteen years ago she wouldn’t have thought herself capable. 

The man who comes to stand beside her is in his mid-twenties, with sandy brown hair and matching eyes. He’s dressed nicely in a pair of jeans and a pullover, warding off the oncoming fall chill settling over Starling, and oddly, Felicity isn’t put on edge by his presence. He meets her gaze shyly, and there’s a flash to a time ago — and to another man who would  _become_  the Flash — and she smiles, somehow needing to put him at ease.

"I don’t mean to bother you, Mrs. Queen, but my name’s Johnny Williams."

Something in the back of her brain sparks — lightning from long ago, but somehow it still burns. He waits as her brain works overtime trying to place him, and then it’s an onslaught: the foundry a hundred lifetimes ago, face-to-face with Oliver and in his space just as much as he was in her head, and  _it was a mistake_. “You’re Ken Williams’ son. The…the Ponzi scheme guy.” She winces. “Sorry.”

He shakes his head, and she’s surprised to see relief in his stance. “No. No, that’s totally fine. I…I know what my dad did. I’ve come to terms with it.”

Felicity smiles gently in spite of the confusion still settling over her at his sudden appearance. “That’s…good. I’m glad.”

There’s a roar as Maggie’s goalie makes a beautiful save, and Felicity is aware of Johnny’s gaze following her own. “They grow up really fast, don’t they?”

She’s immediately on-guard the moment he says it — always will be with her girls, Arrow history or no Arrow history — and her stance tightens. Her companion’s, however, does not, but still she says nothing as Johnny waits a beat before finishing his thought, looking over his shoulder at a redheaded woman, who gave him an encouraging smile. “I, um, found out today that my wife is pregnant.”

The automatic response of “congratulations” still bubbles up within her — she fights to hold on to her ability to see the good in people despite what’s been shown to  _her_  — but she says nothing, and just waits.

(She got good at that a long time ago.

It helps that all the waiting has been worth it.)

"I work at the  _Sentinel_ ,” he says, his reference to the Starling City newspaper momentarily lost in the crowd reaction to a scuffle at mid-field for possession. “I started looking at the Vigilante cases a little while ago.”

Felicity’s eyes fly to Oliver and she immediately starts trying to formulate a plan on how to get them all the hell out of there and put a lid on this before it explodes. It feels like she’s going from the pan into the fire, but she’s more than ready to burn. And then she sees Johnny reach out a placating hand that actually never lands anywhere near her visibly rigid body and glances sidelong, warily, at him. “No, no, I’m not trying to investigate anything, I’m sorry,” he says in a rush, glancing down at her hand, which has instinctively balled into a fist. “I just remember the Vigilante came to see my dad when I was ten. And I remember the Vigilante  _left._ ”

There’s something about his tone on that last sentence, the emphasis on that last word, that stops the panic at the base of her spine, even though her face has remained carefully neutral throughout the entire exchange. “I remember people…bad people…died. But he let my dad live. He ended up letting a lot of people live. He saved a lot of people.”

(There’s a tightness in her chest when he says that, because despite all their efforts, it’s always the defeats that settle within her; the ones they lost seem to count more than all the ones they found. Shado. Tommy. The 503. Eventually, Quentin Lance. Nyssa, who tried to save him.

For all she has in front of her, she misses what she doesn’t.)

He takes a deep breath and she waits for the sucker punch. “You all did,” he says, lowering his voice. But it’s not in warning or the beginning of a shotgun negotiation; he’s not threatening to out their operation. Still, she remains in a fighting stance that would make her husband proud. “My wife…the Canary saved her from a group of men as she was walking home from work one night. You helped our city, and nobody ever  _thanked_ you.”

Her mask remains refined. “Johnny, I’m sorry, but I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about. I mean, I remember your dad from the newspaper, but this Vigilante thing…?” She trails off, shaking her head, throwing him what she hopes reads as a hopeless shrug.

He levels her with a look more knowing and certain than any he’s shot her way during the entirety of their conversation — an interaction that’s going to take her a bottle or four of pinot noir to process — and it reminds her  _so_  of the  _I call bullshit_  look she’d leveled at Oliver that first time in the QC IT Department. ”Mrs. Queen, it’s pretty obvious you’re part of Team Arrow.”

(She nearly says  _we don’t call it that._

For once, though, she almost wants to.

They’ve suffered in silence for so long, but they’ve also celebrated. It feels…nice that someone outside the little family they’ve fought through hellforged fire to make appreciates that.)

"I like puzzles," he says after a minute. "It took a little while, but I put it together."

( _So did we_ , she thinks proudly, glancing between Oliver and her girls and her memories.  _So did we._ )

He clears his throat and extends his hand, smiling when she shakes it. “Anyway. Like I said, just wanted to say thank you. I’ll let you get back to it.”

(She likes that it’s open ended; likes that this is, finally and forever, a reward.)

He walks away, reaching for his wife and lacing their fingers together, Felicity watching them the whole way. She misses the game-winning goal, but wraps her arms around Oliver and for once, she breathes in the victory, when the next week, a large envelope of news clippings and reporters’ notebooks arrives anonymously at the house, a hastily scrawled note of  _it’s all yours_  on a post-it note on top.

It’s her own little participation trophy, and she smiles to herself as she locks it tightly in the safe.


	10. say you'll haunt me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> But now _he_ is looking at _her_ , in the most unexpected of places: on a beach in the Caribbean a mere five minutes from the seasonal home he set up with his second wife and their children, and where he’s at a beachside watering hole watching the FA cup, and suddenly _nothing_ makes sense, but he’s never been so in love with a state of confusion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the Sunday Six free write on Tumblr that is never actually six sentences.
> 
> Title from the Stone Sour song of the same name.

He leaves when she’s just shy of her fifth birthday, and through the years, somehow the picture his mind holds of his daughter is always Coke-bottle glasses, pigtails and a smile that could light the world. He remembers that even when his world was crumbling, often at the hands of Felicity’s mother’s mental illness, when that little girl that looked at him like he hung the moon and the stars, everything had made sense again.

But now _he_ is looking at _her_ , in the most unexpected of places: on a beach in the Caribbean a mere five minutes from the seasonal home he set up with his second wife and their children, and where he’s at a beachside watering hole watching the FA cup, and suddenly _nothing_ makes sense, but he’s never been so in love with a state of confusion; it is, in actuality, a state of grace, and he revels in it even as he is unworthy of it.

She’s the most beautiful ghost he’s ever seen, and he watches in wonderment as his past and her apparent future, going by the rings on her left hand, collide in harmony to the waves crashing against the shore. Both he and her companion smile when she pulls out a floppy hat and about a dozen other things from a tote bag, and he remembers her love of “Mary Poppins,” how he’d bought an extra seat to leave empty when he took her half-siblings to see it in New York for her.

He’s never forgotten. His heart has just broken too many times that the slices that come with missing her threaten to make him bleed out.

She’s looking at the man he’s assuming is her husband — technically his son-in-law, but his heavy heart tells him he had to be a father first to claim that title — the way she used to look at him. This man she’s chosen is clearly her world, and as they settle into their day of relaxation, they reach for each other in tandem, and he has to smile when the young man brings Felicity’s knuckles to his mouth to kiss them.

Even next to each other, he’s never going to let her go, and in that instant, her father knows he’s a partner worthy of his Felicity.

He wonders if she knows how hard he fought to keep her with him, keep them together; how her mother went underground time and again, how the police in one state wouldn’t enforce the custody decree he got in another. He hopes she doesn’t know how he disappeared into a bottle for a decade from the pain and frustration of the alienation, that the only reason he got clean was to attend her high school graduation, or that, four years later and with the help of his youngest son helping him use Google to look for any online presence she might’ve had, had been in Cambridge when she walked from MIT with her degree.

He’s sure she doesn’t know her mother spotted him and told him in no uncertain terms that twenty years does indeed a chasm make, one of hurt and anger and betrayal and confused children crying themselves to sleep every night for almost a year because Daddy had said he’d come back.

He’d typed out a thousand emails to her when his son had found her on LinkedIn, has a pile of addressed Hanukkah and birthday cards in his desk drawer, and had steadfastly refused to have formal portraits of his family done because she was missing and as a result he is incomplete. There’s just so much to say, he knows, and yet nothing at all, because all the words in all the languages would never be enough. Amends are achievable when you’re a worthy, better man, and with his Felicity, he’s not. So he’ll continue to love her from afar and let the man — who, while Felicity’s father has been lost in his own reminiscences, seems to have left his daughter to her floppy hat and book — take care of her the way he could not.

And because the universe laughs at the plans of men and proves them fools, the stool next to him is occupied with Felicity’s companion when he turns back around to watch the end of the match.

He opens his mouth to say something, but the younger man beats him to it. “So that’s where her eyes came from.”

Her father swallows hard, choking on twenty years of memories and shame and change. Still, he takes the hand and introduction when it’s offered. “Oliver Queen.”

"Sam Smoak." He has a hundred questions and explanations and feelings of unworthiness to even ask about her, and his heart feels like it’s going to beat out of his chest, but he can’t help but look back to his little girl. He doesn’t know what he’s asking when he whispers, "Is she…"

"Everything," Oliver replies simply, even though it’s not. "She’s…just _everything.”_ His tone is reverent, respectful, _adoring_ , and the fact his daughter is so thoroughly loved warms Sam even on a beautiful late spring Caribbean day.

The knot in his throat is making it hard to push the words past the time lost and all the things left _un_ said, but he still tries. “She’s had a good life?”

Something darkens Oliver’s eyes for just a moment, and his words are weighted when he finally answers. “She tries to make the world better. There are good days and bad days.”

He has no right to ask, but in this moment he is a man in a desert of perdition finally being offered a drop of water after wandering for so many years. “How long have you been there for both?”

Oliver smiles, glancing back at Felicity, and the sheer adoration on the younger man’s face is so bright it rivals anything the island could produce. “Longer than either of us had realized, I think.”

Sam motions to the band Oliver’s been twisting absentmindedly around his left hand. “Honeymoon?”

Oliver shakes his head slowly, and for the first time, his visage sparks with just a hint of nervousness, but Sam still feels the strength of Oliver’s gaze as he studies the older man when he says, “Babymoon, actually.”

Sam rubs his hand over his face at the news. His baby’s having a baby. “This is one of those times I wish I still drank.”

Oliver tilts his head, and Sam knows in his bones it’s something he’s picked up from Felicity. “Is that why you left?”

Sam shakes his head. “ _Because_ I left.”

"You’re here now, though."

Sam looks back at Felicity, who’s still leafing happily between her preferred pages. “I didn’t even say goodbye.”

He expects a “why did you leave in the first place?” or “why didn’t you come back?” — alibis and excuses masquerading as reasons why, the answers to which Sam dreams about never answering in the violet nightmares of his darkest hours — but Oliver simply stands. “Now’s as good a time as any to say hello.” When Sam doesn’t rise to join him, Oliver says quietly, “We’ve lost a lot the past few years.” Though the words come easily, Sam know the battles that have entrenched themselves into the lines on Oliver’s face were anything but. “Including my parents by happenstance. You have a choice to give her something I never can. And she deserves it, Sam, but so do you.”

The reverent tone is back on that word "choice," a weight that tells Sam choices are what define people to Oliver, probably to Felicity herself; that decisions made and chances taken are their truth, not necessarily the outcomes, and there’s an odd sense of absolution coloring that idea. There’s a freedom there, room to breathe in that second chance, and he decides not to waste it.

(He finds out Oliver’s own island story later, of course, and embraces the man to whom he becomes both a friend and a father figure, holding tight to him in a way that will again never fully explain the depth of what he feels — the gratitude that Oliver had taken a trip to the islands given what Lian Yu had done to him that gave Sam his little girl back — and in that moment, the verbosity Sam shares with his daughter isn’t needed.

Oliver and Felicity get to know Sam’s wife and boys in New York, though it’s “Matilda” they see on stage, and their first family portrait is taken by a nurse as they’re all taken by Alexandra Grace Queen’s arrival into the world.

Despite the professional ones they pose for over the years, that one remains Sam’s favorite.)


	11. quiet but I'm sure (absolute)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: why do you have clothes on?
> 
> I am absolutely terrified to post this, but let's do it anyway.
> 
> Please note this chapter is rated Explicit for sexual content. 
> 
> Title from The Fray's "Absolute."

He glides his finger around the edge of his tumbler of whiskey, feeling the condensation from the melting ice and the thick heat of a southern summer intermixing on his palm. He stops when the vibration starts to sing; not that it'd be heard on the iron-wrought balcony of the Atlanta Grille, where Walter and several coworkers -- _his_ coworkers now, too, Oliver has to remind himself -- are enjoying an after dinner drink above the traffic on Peachtree that passes below them, their buzzing louder but disinterested in the group he's gathered with, focused instead on heading to the North Georgia mountains or perhaps Lake Lanier for the weekend.

("Did you know there's, like, twelve Peachtree Roads in Atlanta?" Felicity had asked the night before he'd left for this trip, kneeling on their bed in a half-buttoned dress shirt of his, swatting a persistent curl of her hair off her cheek as she folded the clothes he handed her from the closet into his carry-on. She'd perched on her knees, bending forward slightly and unknowingly (or uncaringly) exposing her breasts to him as she rolled his socks and placed them in the shoes he'd laid against the bottom of his suitcase, and he'd stopped moving, leaning against the door jamb and unabashedly watching her.

Marveling at her.

Knowing she's a gift and not a reward, but also that she's everything for always, and that's about the only title she needs.

Except, perhaps, that of Mrs. Queen.

What strikes him about their relationship is that they both respect and take pride in the fact it hasn't been perfect. It's been hard fought and they've hurt each other. They've tripped on their fault lines, scraped their knees on a tarnished brick road, bled when their hearts had been broken like so many of the promises made to them; they'd just been lost until they had nothing _left_ to lose.

It's a hard truth, but it's _theirs_ , and they wear it as a badge of honor, regardless of whether on a particular day it feels like a scar or a wound -- though unlike those things the world know exists, their oral history is whispered into murmured kisses and late nights where her head is tucked in his shoulder and her hair is tickling his nose; a moment he's present in and never wants to leave is found in him looking up at first light and watching as she throws her head back as she rides him, the shirt she claimed a long time ago -- fitting, given how long she'd taken hold of his heart -- fluttering away from her body, and his hands moving desperately to catch her, lest he risk losing her again.

He's seen their future, too, as has Digg, because it's in a small telltale ring box tucked safely away in a safe that could survive the apocalypse.

She hadn't really noticed his lingering, giving him random tidbits about Atlanta, like how a small town thirty smiles to the south [she _thinks_ is her hurried caveat, nose scrunching as she tries to remember] saved Sherman from burning it simply because a cousin lived there, and when she'd looked up from putting his toiletries in their bag and zipping the suitcase closed, she hadn't had time to react when he crossed the room in one stride, lifted her fully onto her knees on the mattress so she was tall enough to wrap her arms around him, cupped her face and kissed her passionately, slowly, longingly, like he had the first time -- and the second, and third, she'd tell him later -- _like you wanted to make sure you'd never forget_ \-- and he'd shaken his head and replied, _I wasted too much time with you, and now, I don't want to miss a thing._

His shirt was gone from her frame in an instant, her hands were on his belt even faster, but still he slowed them down as they panted, joined together and foreheads touching, to tell her he loved her, because even if he tells her every single day, it'll never be enough.)

Walter claps a hand on Oliver's shoulder, drawing him from the sounds of the summer concert series in Centennial Park. "You did well today," his stepfather comment (Oliver can't say _former_ yet, maybe ever). "Your ideas for expanding the online content accessibility were inspired."

Oliver smiles, and though he still feels like a kid playing grown-up -- his suit is custom but feels like the time his mother was out of town and his father had forgotten it was Halloween, so Oliver had gone as a businessman in his father's too-big suit and Thea in one of Raisa's uniforms. But his thanks is genuine. "I want to get QC back to where it was."

"And we will. Though I wonder..."

Oliver chuckles at the teasing glint in Walter's eye, knowing what's coming next. "Felicity had nothing to do with the presentation," he laughs. "Said I had to do my own homework for once in my life."

"I always knew I liked that girl. Even if she _did_ decline my job offer."

"We probably couldn't afford her," Oliver says, the amusement catching in his throat. He looks down at his watch and realizes it's almost time to check in with the woman who may be temporarily out of sight but who is never -- _has_ never, even when she existed only in the recesses of his imagination as to what he really wanted to do and be in life -- out of mind.

"Tell Miss Smoak I said hello," Walter says and they shake hands before Oliver heads inside the Ritz Carlton and toward his room.

He slides the key card into the electric lock with one hand and begins loosening his tie with the other, but stops short on the threshold when he senses something's amiss.

The bathroom door is mostly closed, and there's a glow emanating from the tiled marble room, and he takes a more defensive stance; he _knows_ he left it open and dark when he left this morning. He shuts the door almost silently and hears the familiar strain of Felicity's favorite violin concerto.

At that, his shoulders drop and he relaxes, stepping fully into the room. Sure enough, a familiar pair of jeans, ballet flats, tank and sweater are folded on the king sized bed, and Felicity's laptop is charging in the corner, her overnight bag tucked to the side of the desk that lies against the wall.

There's a slight splash of water, and he knows she's in the bath; why fly to surprise your partner -- _boyfriend_ and _girlfriend_ don't cover the three words that have never been little for what he means when he says as he breathes them into her; _partner_ comes closest -- and wait for him in the lobby or the restaurant to have dinner when you can test his swanky bathroom instead?

With a grin, he unbuttons his shirt and pulls it off, chucking it in the vicinity of Felicity's, and is reaching for his undershirt when he hears her moan.

He knows her moans -- _I'm fine, Oliver, it's just a temperature of 103...okay_ fine _I'll go home; I can't hack this firewall -- when the hell did the CIA upgrade their systems; you need to go into a career as a masseuse, Oliver_ \-- but sound is not any of those.

Not even close.

He twitches against his pants when she moans again, louder and longer this time, and it takes him far too long to get to the bathroom door and push it open.

She's a vision -- when isn't she, really? -- with her hair piled into a messy knot atop her head and bubbles dissipating around her breasts as she lounges in the water. He watches as everything undulates around her and knows how her fingers are moving; she is his own type of code, ones and zeroes, that perfect string of combination and compliant that turns everything perfect in a world that so isn't. She's circling her clit with her index finger, pressing down on either side trying to find the best spot.

He feels himself start to strain against his pants and it's his turn to groan when her eyes open and she looks him dead in the face. The oscillation around her increases as she chases the stars; she groans gutterally when she drags her finger up an down her slit, spreading the moisture evenly. She licks her lips and arches her back as her pressure on her clit increases, and he pushes himself off the doorframe and sliding to the side of the tub so quickly that he almost knocks over the glass of what he's guessing is a Syrah. But he daren't blink, for she isn't. There's an almost blackening fury to her movements, the ones trying to chase the white hot tension that precedes release.

He cups her left cheek and turns her head toward him; he ignores the splash of water that douses his pants, instead sucking behind her ear and kissing her fingertips when they come to cover his where they rest on her face.

Her pace grows even quicker, but to his surprise she stops him as he prepares to reach for her and slide two fingers inside. "Just watch me, Oliver," she says, and Jesus _Christ_ if the timbre in her voice isn't a holy experience. She is tight and tense like a coil, but she keeps taking herself to the edge -- she rests her temple against his cheek and together they mutter a litany of _fuck, fuck, **fuck**_ and he can tell she's so, _so_ close.

He presses a desperate open mouthed kiss to her lips and tangles his hand a bit roughly in her hair -- she's gentle only when she needs to be, his Felicity, and more often than not, she likes stiff and staccato -- and looks down through the film of dissolving bubbles to see her hand working as hard as he's ever seen -- or done -- it. He finally closes his eyes at that, beyond hard at this point and desperate to push home, but she cups his chin, forces his gaze back to hers. "You want me to come for you? Hm?"

"Fucking come for me," he whispers, absolutely _wrecked_. "Come on, Felicity."

She pumps twice more and presses and arches so far out of the tub her entire torso immediately fills with goosebumps when exposed to the bathroom air. She sinks back into the lukewarm water, and her pants of breath match his in tone and timing, and he keeps his fingers interwoven within the dark strands of her hair. " _Felicity_."

She smiles. "Surprise?"

He has to laugh and takes back his earlier thought; he may have thought about her before he'd met her, but no way could he have seen Felicity Smoak coming -- no pun intended (but definitely a repeat of the last five minutes, hopefully a little longer and somewhere a little drier.)

"What--? Why--? _How?_ "

She presses a kiss to his mouth, long and slow and sweet, the antithesis of everything she's just done. "Because I missed you, because I wanted to and hourly Delta shuttles."

He glances pointedly around them. "And this?"

She arches an eyebrow, reaches for her wine, takes a long sip before answering. "You didn't like it?"

"I'm trying to find out what I have to do to make it happen again."

She sets her wineglass back on the floor and reaches for him. "Step one, answer this question: why are you still dressed?"


	12. don't you know I dream about you (run)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: thigh-high boots.
> 
> Title from Delta Rae's "Chasing Twisters."
> 
> This chapter is rated Explicit for sexual content.

She smiles at the bouncer as she makes her way past the rope line to him, oblivious to the whispers that follow. Knowing him from Verdant, she asks after his family and is happy to scroll through pictures of dance recitals and football pad pictures; it reminds her Starling City is more than just scorched earth now, after the aftermath.

He lets her pass and she enters the stunning blue and white club — Thea, upon her return and with her reconciliations, had named it Mythology as an ode to her name’s origins, but there’s a part of Felicity that thinks the younger woman wanted, _needed_ to bring reminders of bright, sunny days back with her.

Felicity slides and sidesteps through the throng of people in making her way to the bar, and undoes the belt of the red trenchcoat she’s wearing, showing off just a glimpse of the spaghetti strapped, black satin and lace number she’d paired with a pair of thigh-high suede boots.

She heads over to the bar and orders a margarita, sliding onto a stool and hooking the heel of her boot in the rung at the base. She takes a sip of the drink when it’s ready and swivels around, taking in the light and movement as it dances across her senses. It’s hectic and hedonistic; it’s people blowing off steam with glasses with salted rims and hands belonging to a stranger whose name they won’t remember in the morning.

 _She’s_ here after a dinner out with two of her girlfriends, intending to say hi to Oliver and then wait for him in his office until closing time so they can head home together.

(She also just likes _being_ with him. It’s taken them monumental strides to get here, but it’s like they’ve proven themselves in the journey, not the destination. It’s with him that she’s learned it doesn’t matter that there’s life left to go, lessons to be learned and roads not yet traveled; they slow each other down and take their time because they finally _have I > time.)._

He’s across the club from her, greeting various VIP tables, and one group succeeds in pulling him down to sit, ostensibly to take a selfie, but Felicity sees the not-so-subtle women in the group as they write their numbers on napkins and try to slide them his way.

The look on his face nearly makes her burst out laughing; he looks so uncomfortable, _so_ out of place, and it’s just flat-out hilarious that after all the masks and half-truths he’s yielded, it’s _this_ gt;persona that fits him least.

She tries to hide her smile behind her drink as she watches, and then feels another set of eyes on her. Another woman in the group openly evaluates Felicity, looking her up and down, and the blonde just sits back, elbows on the bar, and enjoys it — she’s fought to be comfortable in her own skin, fought to live for what — and who — are important, and at the end of the day, she knows who Oliver’s going home with; who’s going to be draping her body over his as easily and silkily as the fabric of her dress moves against both of them. Let the girls have a little fun tonight. Felicity Smoak’s got Oliver Queen’s tomorrows booked for the foreseeable future.

He seems to notice the other woman’s distraction, and looks to find what’s got her so interested. Felicity just smiles and crosses her legs, which look a mile long in these boots, and the distance between them doesn’t seem so great now, because she can visibly see him swallow. With a smirk and a shake of her head, she turns halfway back to the bar to set her glass down, and feels the lace hem of the dress pull up even further.

Knowing he’s still watching her intently, remembering and imagining with a fiery tension coiling his body, she tamps down her instinct to pull the skirt back down. Instead, deciding to tease him a little bit, she reaches up and lets her curls out of the clip they’ve been in, knowing he loves when she wears her hair down. She runs her fingers through it, shaking it out a little, biting back a smile when the dress goes even _higher_. But she doesn’t turn back around to see his reaction; instead, she asks for a bottle of water and just waits. She waits and thinks about how surprised those women would be to find that Oliver Queen “wooed” his current love interest by showing up at her house unexpectedly — though, to be fair, she’d never seen him coming, even the first time she met him before midday — at 11:45 at night when they were “just friends,” letting himself in with the key she’d had made just in case.

(Now, sometimes he’ll rest his chin on her stomach, fingers drawing lazy patterns against the circular group of freckles adjacent to her belly button and wonders aloud if they were ever “just” anything, and she’ll run her hand through his hair and say they were something and nothing at the same time, and now…well, now they’re _everything_.)

They hadn’t seen each other for a few days; their latest case had stuck with her, settled in her stomach heavily like grief and inability to help do, so once she’d checked that he wasn’t in his leathers and physically injured, or a suit from trying to get QC back and emotionally injured, she’d smiled up at him from her perch on her couch, hair atop her head in a lazy bun and glasses sliding down her nose as she scrolled the web page she was on, dressed in an old Red Sox t-shirt and MIT running shorts. “Hey. What’s up?”

He’d answered her question using his version of the Loud Voice — the one with which he said nothing at all: deliberate action, movement, forward momentum; irresistible forces and immovable objects — and he’d leaned down and kissed her: _hello, goodbye, I missed you, I need you, come back, come back, come **home** , because it’s not one when you’re not there. _

Feeling him murmur “I love you” against her mouth was as a confession as much as it turned into a litany, a prayer, a piece of God in a world of monsters and men (and not necessarily in that order, and certainly not mutually exclusive.)

Felicity being Felicity, though, had questions: “Why?” she’d asked hoarsely, and he’d rubbed certainty and permanence into her cheekbones with the pads his thumbs, his touch not a brand but instead the honest truth that she is meant to not only be cartographer to his life, but his navigator, his compass.

Just… _his_.

"Because nothing important happened today, and I wanted to share it with you. And I want to share the important days, the good, the bad — all of it. I want all of it. With _you._ ”

She believes in what she can see, and that is, was and always shall be his challenge as much as his counterbalance, and had leaned back and said, “Are you sure?”

He’d kneeled in front of her, taken her hands in his and after pressing his lips to her knuckles replied, “You’re the only thing I know to be true. You’re _real_.”

(He is, too, and she reminds him of that on his darkest days, and on her own, he loves her through it.)

The bartender sets a bottle of water at her elbow, and she smiles her thanks, turning back to the center of the room. The brunette that had noticed her first is looking between her and Oliver, and Felicity guesses she’s trying to figure out why he’d be paying attention to someone like her.

And she smiles to herself, because he knows her not as a woman in a dress looking to get noticed. Instead, he sees her as destinations and detours; best laid plans and balls from left field. .

He knows 7-year-old Felicity hiding her tears behind glasses held together by Scotch tape because they couldn’t afford to replace them just yet, trying to balance the impossibilities of her mother’s life and checkbook. He knows 12-year-old Felicity, who had stopped in the middle of the National Mall on her junior high school tour of Washington DC because she saw a man that looked horrifyingly, ecstatically like her father and not knowing whether to be relieved or disappointed when it wasn’t. He knows 17-year-old Felicity, who pulled over to the side of the road in Kansas as she was on her way to university when the blackest sky she’s ever seen rolled toward her, her first warning that the ways of the world can be devastatingly stormy outside the bright lights of casinos and safety of Vegas. He knows 21-year-old Felicity who struggled balancing extra credits and living with her old friend/unexpected roommate/ _really_ unexpectedly pregnant Catherine after she’d been kicked out. And he knows of her this morning, the woman who, after leaving his bed to run with her friend Beth, chose to completely negate the calories they’d just burned by stopping into Beth’s bistro for a chocolate croissant and cappuccino.

He’ll know of her tomorrow morning as well, and the day after, and the day after, when they wake looking at the signs of the life they’re building out of the one he led — toothbrushes side-by-side, a Netflix queue they add things to separately but together that they’ll one day have time to watch, and eventually, she’ll have his name and he’ll have her forever.

He knows all of her, loves all of her — as she does him — and _that’s_ why they work.

She pulls some bills out of her purse to close out her tab, and slides from her perch, heading for the entrance. She lets the hordes of people hide the fact that she doubles back and uses the back staircase to get into Oliver’s office.

She’s using his computer, trenchcoat off and draped over the back of his office chair, working on some email and writing him a post-it to remind him he needs to buy cell phone boosters so she can get service on her devices while she’s here, and smiles when, twenty minutes later, she hears the electronic lock outside the office door beep.

"That was cruel and unusual, Smoak," he says as he pushes the door open, but there’s no bite to his voice.

She looks up, feigns innocence. “What are you talking about?”

He crosses the office, and when she tilts her head toward him, he gives her a sweet kiss on the cheek but runs decidedly bolder, warmer hands across her neck, shoulder blades and eventually down her arms. “I couldn’t follow you.”

"And let the people down there know Oliver Queen is off the market? Perish the thought," she teases with a playful shrug. "Let them have their fun thinking they can snag you. It makes them come to the club more; buy more drinks for recognition and liquid luck to try to talk to you. And more liquor sales means more revenue, which means more saving the city from our couch and in my pajamas. Win/win, Queen."  
  
“So you’re just looking out for my fiscal future, is that it?”

She nods seriously. “Exactly.”

Reaching down, his fingers sprawl openly on her belly, and his voice is hoarse when he manages, “ _That_ is not part of your pajama set.”

She stands up, twists at the waist a little bit. “You like?”

"Depends." He pulls her to her and wraps his arms around her waist, nuzzling the spot between her collarbone and neck. "Is it my birthday and I get to unwrap it now?"

She chuckles, but her blunt nails aren’t as playful when they thread through the short hairs at the nape of his neck to pull him closer to her lips. “No birthdays, but what about unwrapping it just because you want to? Or did you find a suitable replacement for me downst—”

His mouth is on hers so instantly and insistently that he swallows both her words and the gasp that spills out at the sudden movement. His palms cradle her cheeks and his tongue is gentle but insistent, and he groans when she opens to him. She scoots her back just a little bit, and with a significant lack of effort — something she’d find freakish if it wasn’t so fucking hot — lifts her to the edge of his desk and steps between her legs.

She rests her right leg on the chair behind him and wraps the other around his waist, urging him forward.

He rests his forehead against hers, hands roaming over the satin, fingers brushing so sensitively against the gentle fabric that it almost feels like she’s not wearing anything at all. Her breath hitches by his ear when he gently palms her breast, teasing her nipple taut, and her right hand moves from the desk to the end of his tie. She jerks him up until their mouths crash together, teeth and tongues, and he wraps an arm around her waist so she can arch up into him, open herself to him.

She’s curved off the mahogany, completely supported by his grasp, when he pushes aside her underwear and slides a finger through her folds, and he bends to swallow her moan, though when he adds a second digit in his explorations, he’s not able to quiet her completely. His eyes darken at the noises she makes; it’s an intensity she’s seen on his face only when she’s around, and it makes her wetter to think that she can reduce him to this; not rubble, for he will still have walls, but he’s accessible now, _eager_ even, and she still marvels that a man who can do so much damage with his hands and body and mind uses all of that to know her in the most gentle, intimate way possible; heal and hurt, fire and ice, domination and submission.

There is only this, only them, and the love she feels for him protects them so they can disappear into it, and when he slides his two fingers inside and speeds up his desperate pace — he loves watching her come apart at his mercy; the only thing on earth that can truly break Oliver Queen is also the one trying to help put him back together — she thrusts her hips as triumphantly as she has for any of their victories.

She still has hold of his tie with her right hand and clutches the back of his head, with her left, and he’s bent over her, panting and whispering into her neck, urging her forward, and she feels his feral grin against her skin when his thumb brushes against her clit and she bites back a scream. She can’t help but laugh as he teases her, even as she twists and turns, desperate for more contact, and he finally leans back to look at her.

He slows down and she groans, and he just chuckles against her hair when he pulls her up from the desk into more of a sitting position. His thumb is _right there_ but instead he pulls it down, closer to her center.

The pressure is gorgeous as he circles her, and a shiver runs through her when he starts to kneel, running his hands down the black suede of her boots, pushing her knees further apart.

He replaces his fingers with his tongue and she grips the desk so hard her knuckles turn white. He hums against her skin, grip tight on her legs so she can’t move, and she undulates against his mouth, head back, lips bit so she doesn’t scream. He takes her to the edge, once, twice, and she looks down at him with hooded lids and a gaze that clearly tells him to take what he wants so she gets what she needs, and then it’s starbursts and supernovas, blinding silence in the in-between, and for a moment, everything in the world is bright and beautiful again.

He brings her down slowly and then stands up, wiping his mouth on his shoulder before reaching for her, and the kiss is slow, memories and thanks and declarations. She moves her hands to his belt and with swift precision releases him from his pants and boxers, cupping his erection and sliding her hand torturously slowly. He closes his eyes and rests his forehead on the crown of her head and breathes the sensations in. She ups her pace, swiping a thumb over the liquid at the top of his cock and she can feel him tensing, getting readier by the minute.

"Not yet," she says lowly, in a sultry tone that just makes him harder, and, contradicting herself, she pumps harder. "Don’t you come yet."

 _"Felicity."_ It’s a plea and a prayer and he pulls back and stares at her, running a hand down the flushed that’s painted itself across her chest. He wants to feel all of her, silk and skin and synchronicity, and he also wants to _hear_ her, this gorgeous woman with so many words for so many reasons, and he loves when she talks him through it.

"I want you inside me," she says, and amid his desperate groans, they share a small smile over these very non-platonic circumstances before he reaches for his wallet in the desk drawer. She peppers kisses on the exposed parts of his neck and the top of his chest while still holding him in her hand, and he kisses her again as she unrolls the condom and slides it on.

He slides in and they both sigh even as they set a harried pace. He pulls her closer and grips her hips, and she arches back over the desk again, moving one leg to his shoulder, crying out when he goes deep and hits just the right spot. Her finger moves to between them, circling her clit, and she’s tumbling again even as she feels him holding on, but she still flies in it, knowing he’ll always follow. She pulses around him and then feels him fall, and spent, his head falls to her shoulder.

She kisses his ear, the little spot between it and his neck, and he runs a soothing hand up and down her back. They separate but stay wrapped in each other for a moment as they try to catch their breath.

He kisses her cheek, brushes sweaty pieces of her hair off her face and cleans up. She adjusts herself but remains on her perch until he takes her hand and pulls her to sit on his lap in his desk chair. She cups his face for a gentle kiss, and then settles comfortably back, a satisfied smile on her face.

Below them, the club pulses with light and life, and she smiles. “Think they’re having fun down there?”

He chuckles. “I think we’re having more fun up here.”

She laughs softly at that, playing with the hair at the nape of his neck. “You ever wonder…”

He completes her sentence as fully as he retains her heart. “I think I would have found you under any circumstances.” He runs his hands up and down her arms and says, “I would have noticed that ass —” she _swears_ it wiggles on his lap of its own accord, and he retaliates by kissing the tops of her breasts — “and _definitely_ these.”

She smiles then, a bit wider and more relaxed. “Once a frat boy, always a frat boy.”

He sobers a little bit and then shakes his head. “But I would’ve seen what I see now — someone gorgeous inside as she is without, and with a smile I’d do anything to see again. But it would’ve been clear you were _completely_ out of my league and that I didn’t have a shot.”

She snorts.” You realize that about 99% of people would think the exact opposite.”

"Well then, this is part of the 1% that’s important to me."

She chuckles, running her fingers along his dress shirt, touching and loving his scars, even though she can’t see them. She’d long ago memorized the placement of each, and every now and again they’ll lie in bed and he’ll tell her what she’s sure is a whitewashed version of events. But she’ll take it over the uncertainty, over the silence. “Better than the mansion and the money?”

He nods, and his eyes are truthful, his tone reverent. “You didn’t catch my eye. You were just sort of…the center of the universe all of the sudden, and I didn’t get why or how, but I think I knew even then. That’s why we found another way. That’s why I came back from the island after the Undertaking — had it just been Digg…”

She smiles softly, lacing their fingers together, and _partners_ , which used to seem like a big word, settles warmly over her as he speaks. “I meant it the first time I said it, you know.”

She unlinks their fingers and rubs her palms on his thighs soothingly. “I know.”

“ _I_ didn’t. Just standing there and hearing you say ‘I want to be with you’… just _looking_ at you and wondering when you became the best part of me — I just _knew_ I had to say it. You’d gone from someone who worked IT to everything that was important to me. And if I didn’t come back…at least I’d go down having done one thing right in my life in telling you the truth.”

She still remembers that night, when he was so close and yet completely out of reach, and a shiver runs down her backbone, darkness and demons at the thought of losing him — then, now, it doesn’t matter.

But she also remembers the canyons they’ve crossed, the chasms they’ve jumped so the other could catch them — because they’d both fallen long before either had realized they’d leaped — distance, whether it be _because of the life that I lead_ or a nightclub dance floor, is no longer what defines them. Instead, it is this closeness, this entanglement that holds them together. She’s not going anywhere; there’s no point in running unless she’s running with him. And if _he_ should run, well, she’s already proven she’ll go to the ends of the earth for him.

"You’re thinking loudly again," he says, pulling her attention back to him.

She grins. “Where are the earplugs I got you for Hanukkah?”

He brushes a hand over her face, cups her cheek, stares directly into her eyes. In the beginning, the intensity was intimidating, but now it just tells her wordlessly everything she needs to know. She nuzzles his hand as he says, “I love you, Felicity.”

The words are still a little bit big, but they’re safe now, so she answers anyway. “I know.”

He pulls her back to him and emotion catches in his throat when hem says, “I don’t tell you that enough.”

She leans even further forward, once more into the breach, but holds on to him, as she always has and always will, and murmurs into the skin by his ear. “I always hear you.”


	13. let it break your name

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "Love isn’t a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now." - Fred Rogers
> 
> Written for the Olicity Hiatus Challenge on Tumblr.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from the Uncle Jed cover of "Brother."

 “You sure?” he whispers, and she only feels it because it’s murmured against her temple and because she’d said it to him less than six hours ago at the courthouse across another town line, and he’d just nodded, but she’d known from the way the early autumn light had changed in his eyes that despite their different locale – a small Massachusetts hamlet with two traffic lights and one up-and-coming semi-famous actress to its name – and their different identities (two she’d made for days that were not supposed to include the word “wedding” in them, carefully backbuilding them versus the other, less palatable but easier option of stealing birth certificates that hadn’t been needed in many years for proof of anything but heartbreak) that despite the trail of blood and mayhem that seemed to be following them of late despite many the miles and many other monikers, this was the only thing of which he was truly, completely sure.

(There are some days when all they believe in is each other.

She’d repeated that to herself as she’d climbed those steps this morning, smiled at the part-time town clerk-slash-town-historian-slash-high-school gym teacher, handed over their forged documents and signed her wedding certificate with a shaking hand like they’re draft papers, because this is indeed a war.

Still, despite the changing leaves of a New England fall and the weight of no ring on a finger that should have one, kissing Oliver as her husband was everything she’d believed in and nothing she’d expected.)

They’d retreated back to their motel off route 109 and she’d cried – touched, this time, she raced to assure him – when he pulled out the bottle of Rothschild. They’d toasted on top of scratchy sheets and with the paper cups perched on the edge of the dingy sink, and he’d leaned past her to put his glass on the side table next to her. He’d braced himself on either side of her and rested his forehead against hers. “This is not how I’d planned this.”

She’d smiled, running a thumb over his cheekbone. “We’ll do it again.”

(She can’t bring herself to say _better_ , because she doesn’t know.

What she _does_ know is that she’ll follow him to the ends of the earth, in name and in blood and in sickness and in health, and she _knows_ , with every beat of her fighting heart, that it will be in for better or worse and until death do they part.

The world’s already tried to make them bend.

But still they stand.

Together.

Unbroken.)

“Anywhere you want,” he’d vowed, as seriously as the ones they’d taken in front of the salt-and-pepper haired man, and she had, just as she somehow knew she always would, believed him.

He’d kissed her bare ring finger and she didn’t know who longed for something to be there – a token, a symbol, a _sign,_ a declaration as loud as a golden glint in the sun might be – more. She’d taken his face in her hands and kissed him for all she was worth – all _they_ are worth, because it goes beyond anything they could buy or what he decided was too sentimental to rid the Queen vault of.

And, as sure as she nods against him now, bracing herself for the needle that will touch her hip as soon as the tattoo artist deems himself – and her, she’s sure – to be ready to inscribe her promise, the perfect mirror of the one just put on his own body, she’d reached for her phone and searched for a local parlor.

(She is proud of his scars, of all he has borne, as she is proud of her own.

This, though, is not a reminder of what they’ve survived. It is instead an affirmation that they are in this together; that they _choose_ – something taken from them by fires forged by others but that they will burn within to reclaim – to be together, beginning in the endings, and maybe, just maybe, ending in their next beginning.

It is painful, but then again, the best things can be.)

The world doesn’t know.

The world may _never_ know.

But _she_ knows.

And it’s all she needs.


	14. give a little time to me (we'll burn this out)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: forehead kiss

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from Ed Sheeran's "Give Me Love."

It unnerves him when it’s her kick and not the alarm or the smell of coffee (or even her mouth on various parts of him) that wakes him, and for the first time in a little over ten months, he wakes with a frenzied staccato for a heartbeat and a sense of panic rising out of short, shallow breaths. He puzzles over the discomfort for a minute before looking down at the tiny titan next to him, taking a moment to wonder at the idea that she could change so many fundamental things about him with a steady hand and an even surer heart, until he realizes her brow is not only furrowed in her restless sleep, but that there are also beads of sweat collecting in the ridges.

He takes her hand in his and finds her skin clammy, then presses his lips to her forehead. She stirs beneath both touches and her eyes flutter open as he registers her fever.

She groans, kicking the sheet off her and tries to adjust the tank top and boy shorts she wears as pajamas, and presses the heel of her palm to her head after she pulls the sweaty fabric away from the small of her back. “I feel awful,” she rasps, turning momentarily into him.

He runs a hand over her head and to her neck before she pulls away, his body heat frustratingly uncomfortable, a soft look of concern donning his features. He starts to say something, but then shuts it when she opens one eye to look at him. “And if you tell me ‘I told you so,’ I will breathe on you and infect you with this plague.”

He chuckles, sweeping another kiss across her temple and running his thumb across the pulse point on her wrist in silent acquiescence and apology. She’d reported a nasty bug was making its way through the IT Department of Kord Enterprises, and for all the battles they’ve raged and the front lines they’ve crossed, even her steadfast determination at first trying to avoid catching it, and then once she started feeling unwell, willing herself to believe it was just a cold, seems to have left her as less than Braveheart in its wake.

(Not that he doesn’t believe in that determination, that heart, her bravery, because he does. Somehow, he always has, and knows he always will, because it was she who got him believing in “always” again and, more significantly, in the first place.)

She starts to cough, and he winces at how deep it sounds. She’d been going through cough drops like he goes through tennis balls, but clearly to no avail. The hand on the back of her neck dips to the small stripe of skin showing on her abdomen, and he rubs his thumb soothingly against it. He tries to anchor her in that comfort, the one similar to that which she’s given him time and again, but that he still worries over. For all the things he’s good at, he wants to be the best when it comes to Felicity.

(He uses a bow and she commands code, but the most important thing he wields is his love for her, and even though the weight of it tires his hands sometimes, he knows it’s that arsenal that proves him most powerful.

In the end, he didn’t need all the king’s horses or all the king’s men — or even those of a Queen variety — to put him back together again.

He just needed her hand in his, and his heart with her.)

He kisses her shoulder and finally moves out of bed, going to check the medicine cabinet for something that might help, frowning when he sees nothing. He quickly brushes his teeth, moving back into their bedroom to pull out a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. 

They have a silent but easy conversation, her brow arching in questioning and he hooking a thumb over his shoulder and then slashing his hand across the air, motioning that they had nothing in the house to alleviate her symptoms. She sighs, settling back against the pillows again, and he returns to rinse, throwing his clothes on before padding barefoot to his sock drawer. 

(He remembers when she bought the dresser, how she’d left a few drawers open for him without fanfare or even a question as to its necessity. It was somehow just breathed into both existence and acceptance; it was like she is, was, and, he knew, forever would be: just  _there_ and just  _right._

Home had been as wayward a definition as he’s ever been, but he’d realized that night as he wrapped his arms around her, pressing kisses to the triangle of freckles on her right shoulder, that she was his safe haven, his true north; elemental and for all seasons.

Anything and everything.

It’s fitting, then, that he’d hidden her engagement ring in the very same drawer before moving it to his safety deposit box, lest she stumble across it while putting laundry away.)

She chuckles as he tries to walk and put his socks on at the same time, and shakes his head even as a smile turns up the corner of his mouth, knowing she’s thinking of their first night together, when in his haste, he’d basically tripped over his own two feet while carrying her to the bed and bruised the crap out of his side as he banged into the doorjamb. 

(He prefers to remember the sound of her headboard banging into the wall, but lets it slide since she’s not feeling well.)

He kneels next to her, running a hand through her hair. “What hurts?”

She puts a hand on her chest, which he delicately moves and replaces with his mouth. She cups his cheek and smiles when he looks back up at her, and then says, “My throat.”

He repeats the movement, kissing the underside of her chin, and he feels more than hears when she continues, “My ears.”

She laughs beneath his mouth that time, his stubble tickling her sensitive skin, and even though it’s hoarse, he finds himself relaxing ever so slightly in the idea that he might be her best medicine.

(He used to count his time in minutes, hours, maybe days once in a while. And for as much as she’s made him believe in years again, it’s the seconds he treasures most, these little moments that don’t feel so small anymore.)

"Head," she says, and when he kisses her forehead, the cycle is complete, back to where he began — and also where he ended: with her, not in a life he leads, but the one they’re building together, because for the first time, it’s not a tale told in "I" or "me"; it’s "us" and "we" and feeling more like himself in those than he ever did on his own.

He runs a thumb over her mouth and teases softly, “How about here?”

She smiles again, sitting up to finish the connection, and he presses all he can into the embrace before standing back up and preparing to head out. “You want Popsicles for your throat?”

She nods. “And maybe some orange juice?”

He nods, then turns and unplugs his cell phone from its charger before leaning back down and kissing her gently once more. “Anything else?”

"Not that I can think of," she says. "Thank you."

"Always," he says, no longer scared of that permanence. And really, it’s the least he can do; she has cared for him more times and in more ways than he remembers or deserves, but the one thing she’s shown him — _encouraged_ him in, even, to his eternal amazement — is how to love someone through something. He has always borne things on crumbling shoulders, but standing on hers, being able to share that burden, has made him stronger than all the training in the world. It lifts him past the places he was too afraid to approach, innocuously darkens the things he worried might dull her brilliance, shores the fault lines he still finds in himself; all the things he was too scared to be with her.

But now that he’s _with_ her, truly and unequivocally _in_ this, arguably more than he ever has been with anything else, the only uncertainty is a welcome one: how much more he could love her, and it’s there that her love of mysteries has taken hold of him just as she’s taken hold of his mind, body and soul – and, most importantly, his heart – because for once in his life, he can’t wait to charge headlong and evermore into the breach.

(It’s not the cashier’s sympathetic cluck of her tongue he smiles at as he finishes up at the grocery store.

It’s the fact that when she deems him a good husband – despite his lack of ring and his own disbelief in a future when he always seemed to be two steps behind trying to outrun his past – he doesn’t correct her, because he finally, truly believes.)


	15. from there on we might just grow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: who you are when I'm not looking

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm actually really iffy on this one, so I'd love to know what you think.
> 
> Title from the Uncle Jed cover of "Brother."

  
He stands in the doorway of the rebounding Queen Consolidated day care center, leaning against the door jamb, arms folded and legs crossed. He offers a little wave to the caregivers as they get the children situated for lunch in the adjoining room, but after that, his focus is entirely on Felicity, sitting in the middle of the play area, shoes off and to the side, playing with building blocks and their godson.

Her laugh is melodic as she steadies Noah on his feet, holding him at the waist as he reaches out and demolishes what they’ve built.

(He knows a thing or two about that, about loss, about destruction, and it used to feel all-consuming.

Standing here now, he realizes just how much he’s gained; the audacity needed to rebuild everything from the rubble — phoenix and flames and dust to everlasting dust — taken back with her by his side, reclaiming what had been lost.

Defining what has been found, and reveling in it.)

Her head is bent near Noah’s ear, and she lowers her voice as she speaks quietly to him. She is gentle in a world that is not; shelter from the storm. She cares for Noah as she does Oliver, with quiet strength that deafens him some days, and a fearlessness to be with them with her whole heart.

(What she doesn’t know — what he’s wanted to tell her for months now, but the words stumble and staccato and scatter in his throat — is that she has taken charge of _his_ heart as well.

It’s all he has to give some days, and he hopes if will be enough, because he’s realized that in the end, they are not unthinkable. In fact, they’re _all_ he can think about.)

He shouldn’t want this kind of life; never did before. But he does now, harshly and fully and all surrendering. He’s amazed by her ease with Noah; she didn’t have much of a guiding parental hand, and yet seeing her with him triggers something in Oliver.

She is unguarded with Noah, open and honest and bright, and Oliver gets glimpses of a carefree Felicity, one that, partly thanks to him, doesn’t come out so much. He’s trying to be better, trying to do this right, even though her voice is ringing in his head that it’s her life, her choice.

He wants to be part of that life, because hers is the only face he sees when he thinks about a future, a family, now. Shadows of doubt and duty slink back into the clarity of his feelings for her, as she is sharp and defining, but they are also heavy with possibility. And yet it feels safe, happy, _right_.

Inevitable.

It feels hopeful, that most dangerous of words.

He watches her pull a dinosaur puppet out of a toy bin, and Noah bounces as she talks in a silly voice, and his wide grin matches that of his godfather, still lingering in the doorway. He’s grateful Digg and Lyla trust him with the most precious of responsibilities. He knows the cost of that, feels the weight of that importance. It used to scare him, but now it feels like the most important mission they’ll ever take on.

And they’ll do it together. Always together, even when they’re apart.

(Always remains a big word, but somehow, now, it’s attainable.

He just has to find the courage to reach for it.

For _her_.)

Noah leans across Felicity’s lap for another puppet, and she can’t hold the boy _and_ do a second character, so Oliver pushes off the door and walks toward them.

Noah spots him first and starts bouncing again, flapping his arms excitedly. Felicity leans back so as not to get smacked upside the head, and catches his eye as he approaches. Her smile is surprised but her eyes are happy, and as he crouches down in front of them, he holds out his arms and Noah turns and walks unsteadily into his embrace.

“Hey, little man,” he says, situating himself next to Felicity, his pant leg brushing against the hem of her dress as she leans against the shelving unit next to the toy box.

(Something sparks at the contact despite its minimalism, and she’s warm and whole and beautiful, and dear _God_ does he want this. He wants his ring on her finger and their child in his hands.

He wants the whole damn thing.)

He settles Noah in his lap and then reaches for the koala puppet the little boy had pulled out.

"G’day, mate," Oliver says in an Australian accent — or so he thinks, until Felicity lets out a bark of laughter.

"That is _terrible_ ,” she chastises playfully, voice vibrantly amused. “What accent was that supposed to be?

He pretends to be affronted. “That was perfect.”

"Perfectly awful." She reaches over and covers Noah’s ears, and he gets a whiff of her shampoo. "You’re going to traumatize him."

"Tough crowd," he replies and she grins. He does too; she’s infectious. He loves seeing her like this, so joyful and relaxed. It feels more poignant that it’s back in this building, the one bearing his family name and his family shame, a place where he’d managed to hurt the one person he’d never raise a bow against. But being here with her now feels like reclamation, a fresh start and one more second chance.

They end up taking it.

They lean forward and reach their puppets toward Noah’s tummy for a tickle at the same time, and then turning their heads, they are millimeters apart, shades of violet memories of an elevator shaft and non-platonic circumstances coloring a ribbon of recognition through him, and it feels like a lifeline instead of a noose.

She’s right there. She’s always been right there.

And finally, _finally_ , so is he.

He leans over and kisses her gently, and it’s sweet and sunshine and —

Home.

It’s home.

Her non-puppet hand caresses his cheek, and he bands an arm around Noah’s stomach to keep him still, and threads his other hand through her hair, thumb trailing behind her ear and down her neck. Remembering himself and the audience of other children and staff, he ends it far too soon for his liking, but rests his forehead against hers.

He breathes her in, savors what is and what’s yet to come, because he feels them in his bones; feels the life left to go, a life he never believed he could have until she believed enough for both of them.

"It was still a crap accent," she says, and he puffs in amusement.

"I can’t convince you otherwise?"

She leans back and surveys him seriously, but there’s a sparkle in her eye, and a thrill shoots down his spine at the mischievousness in her expression. “I’m sure we can work something out. Maybe over dinner and that bottle of Rothschild you promised me.”

(Dinner turns out to be Chinese take-out spread across her coffee table, and he holds her to him tightly that night, fingers in her hair and lips on her temple, whispering wishes and plans into her skin.

He still doesn’t convince her otherwise on the accent.)


	16. Brand New Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Digglet is not the only thing born that day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the Olicity Hiatus Challenge on Tumblr. The prompt was a picture of two people hiding from the rain under a jacket.

Felicity’s phone rings at exactly 4:38 in the morning. Startled, she leaps out of bed, scrambling for purchase on anything that could be used as a weapon. She grabs the lamp on the side table, momentarily forgetting it’s still plugged into the outlet. She yelped and started to fall forward, her tumble caught by her former boss/partner in crime/new roommate.

She has to laugh at the porcupine resting snugly on his head, and until the day she dies, she’ll never understand why she did it – or be more thankful.

He smiles gently, bright as the sun in the very pre-dawn hours, and his hand finds her hip seemingly of its own volition. His circular movements warmer than the bed she’d just climbed out of.

“So?” He asks impatiently, but kindly. “Are we ready for takeoff?”

“Ground control to major Tom,” she confirms, an absolute shit-eating grin crossing her face. In the world they’re trying to build, everything feels extraordinary – and though childbirth is a miraculous thing in and of itself – the fact that Digg and Lyla found a way to be together both on and off the clock is something she wants, too, watching Oliver hurry back into his room and throw on some jeans and a black v-neck sweater. “Car’s leaving in ten minutes,” he calls over the sound of the rushing water as he prepares to brush his teeth.

“It’s my car!” she protests from her ensuite, leaning against the jamb and watching him in the adjacent bathroom, breathing in the beauty and grace and definition of him in her space.

She’ll never tell him this, but she’d known even then she wouldn’t leave after he found Walter. Because what they were doing was far more than one man, or even one arrow. They were a team.

They were a family.

And now they were getting a long-awaited addition.

Oliver pulled on an olive green coat and zipped it up, and she chose a winter white cableknit sweater. “You’re not going to be cold?”

She rolls her eyes, but there's still a sparkle in them, and she knows he sees it. She revels in the freedom to tease him like this "I'll be fine, Mom."

It’s been…different having Oliver under her roof. She hadn’t hesitated when she’d mentioned he had no place to go; she had a spare room with about four thousand computer parts strewn about (he just couldn’t open the closet as a result – not that she minds clearing out a drawer or two for him in her own dresser, because there’s something sort of permanent, comforting; the antithesis of the world they live in and are trying so hard to change.)

She reaches for their wallets and her car keys, trying to curtail his snatching them first, but of course, he’s faster and grabs her about the waist to stop her forward momentum.

(She wonders briefly if he'll ever know just how much she wanted to propel straight into him.

He answers the unasked question, and she swallows visibly and something settles low and hot in her stomach when his eyes dart to her mouth and the grip on her hips tighten.

This dance they do is an interesting one; they know which steps they want to take, and that the beat keeping them just outside arms’ length is slow, agonizingly so.)

He tucks a piece of hair behind her ear – even though she’s pretty sure she didn’t have a flyaway, and she leans into his touch just slightly. He is warm and safe and it’s what helps get her up in the morning.

(The smell and sound of coffee and bacon every morning don’t hurt, either. The first time he tried to use her waffle iron, however…she’s still not sure what came over her to lean up on her bare tiptoes and maneuver herself to place her chin on his shoulder, lips mumbling against the skin on the back of his neck. Something hitched in him then, and the spoon had fallen to the counter with a clatter, but it had been some time before Felicity realized that Oliver had covered his hand on hers , which rested on his stomach, and that he’d shivered in…anticipation?

Maybe the beat _was_ on.)

Since that day, they’re more tactile with each other; more approachable. They’ve had those talks when they say nothing at all, just passing the carton of mint chocolate chip ice cream between them. He’s explained the off-side rule in hockey a hundred times, but she’ll never tell she got it on the first try; she just loves seeing him so passionate about something that doesn’t involve arrows and quivers.

On the rare nights they have off, they curl up on the couch, and inevitably her head starts to droop as sleep takes hold. He always shifts around to make sure her head rests on his shoulder, and the last few times, as she’s falling slowly and soundlessly into a deep sleep, she swears she’s heard his voice calling her from above: _I mean it. I love you._

Shaking herself from her reverie, she double checks she has chargers for electronics, cell phones and the like. Oliver’s already at the front door shoehorning his feet into his loafers. They stop short in the foyer when they see it’s raining pretty steadily. “Crap,” Felicity mutters under her breath. “I’ll be right back.’

He grabs her wrist when she turns to head back upstairs to get an umbrella. “I’m in if you’re in.”

Something tells her he’s not just talking about dodging raindrops.

She nods and smiles and he shrugs out of the coat, holding it above his head. She’s tucked neatly against his side, and it’s naïve to think, given everything they’ve endured, that this is how dreams should fold quietly, simply, into reality. The quiet moments tend to be the ones that speak the loudest: the relief she feels when his key turns in the lock every day, him stealing her phone ostensibly to add something to the grocery list but instead leaves her borderline inappropriate jokes just to make her smile.

(He doesn’t have to try, though. He just does).

He tents his coat above his head and the two of them make a run for it, and forget the fact that it’s quarter til five and normal people are asleep, she still has to laugh, because he’s still in there. Her Oliver, not the one who didn’t tell them about the Mirakuru, the one who didn’t sleep with Isabel Rochev; the Oliver that makes sure upon penalty of death that when they order Thai for lunch, they know not to put peanuts anywhere near her order. Her Oliver is the one that came with her to the hospital when her friend Catherine restarted chemo, and he took her daughter Riley out for lunch and a movie. Her Oliver’s the one that’s bruised and bloodied but never broken, and she’s proud of him for that.

She loves him for that, and as the rain beats down on them in absolution, she realizes she wants to tell him.

Despite the torrential rain pounding absolution into them, she turns and rests her back against the car, out of the reach of the protective coat. Ever so slowly, giving him any time to run away, she leans forward.

It’s everything she wished and nothing she expected. He threads a hand through her hair and a water droplet falls off the jacket over her head and makes her shiver. That allows him to bend his knees a little and brace one hand on the car, laving and loving and her heart beats out _home, home, home._

Her cell phone chimes in her pocket, and he groans, resting his forehead against hers. She smiles, giving him one last peck before answering. “John? Is everything okay?”

“Where the hell are you guys? She’s starting to push!”

“On our way.” Felicity chucks the keys at Oliver and he throws her a questioning look. “I timed it eleven minutes and twenty seconds, hitting all lights and stop signs. See if you can beat me.”

(He can’t.

But tonight, that doesn’t matter.)

Michael Robert Diggle comes screaming into the world after about an hour of pushing, and Felicity stands at the head of Lyla’s bed while the boys keep to themselves for a moment in the corner.

Oliver pats Digg on the back. “Congrats, man.” He shakes his head. “It’s kind of hard to believe.”

“What, that I’m responsible enough to be a father?”

Oliver snorts softly in amusement. “That there are so many good days, and sometimes, they actually outnumber the bad.”

Diggle follows his gaze to Felicity and Lyla, the former looking absolutely terrified at the prospect of holding the newborn, and Oliver finds himself coming up from behind her and strengthening her arms so she feels more steady.

She is steady, though; she is a saint and a sinner and absolution and second chances and final answers. And he’s starting to realize that it’s not that he can’t do this without her, it’s that he doesn’t want to.

He looks out the window then, and smiles at the cliché – for as much as it is one, it’s still beautiful – and dawn is breaking and a faint rainbow is forming in the distance.

A brand new day indeed.


	17. Atlantis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Space: the final frontier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the Olicity Hiatus Challenge on Tumblr. The prompt was an AU free-for-all.

“Do you ever get tired of looking at it?”

It’s 3AM. She should be home, in bed. Like a normal person.

( _His_ bed, if he had a preference.

Then again, she is the most remarkable person he’s ever met, so maybe normalcy is just a tad overrated.)  
He starts to make his way back to the launch door to confirm the locked and loaded status, refusing to acknowledge that he knows her well enough now that he doesn’t need to ask for clarification.

He grabs the corner of the module and pulls himself into the alcove holding what she’d termed his bow and arrow – in actuality an updated version of the thirteen mile tether Atlantis and Columbia had attempted to launch in the early ‘90s. It feels fitting, then, that they’ll be launching on the third night of Hannukah, when the sun is in orbit in Sagitarrius, the archer, because for as much as the million dollar grants and NASA training, she’s the one thing that’s gotten him through; his own connection back to Earth.

People, really, after the death of his best friend.

There’s a part of him, for all the science and starbursts, that considers her his own Atlantis; the thing rumored to exist but that he never really believed in.  
It is always dark where he is, but there’s something in her – not just her voice, but her entire spirit; an inner light so bright he wonders if it could ever be harnessed – that makes him float even more than zero gravity and weightlessness.

“No,” he finally answers, adjusting his headset when the third sunrise of the day rotates through and crackles the transmission for a moment. “It makes you feel big and little at the same time. That never gets old.”

“I’ll bet.” A pause, then a quiet sip of what he knows is coffee. He groans, and he hears the huff of amused laughter. “Sorry,” she says, tone completely unrepentant.

“You’re a terrible person, Dr. Smoak.”

“Thank you, Dr. Queen.” He can hear her smile and for once is glad she isn’t there to see his. He feels like he’s in grade school again and Mandy Henning, gorgeous brunette captain of the Starling City Prep cheer squad and future ex-wife of its quarterback, just walked in the door to babysit him and his sister; he’s floating in space – doing actual rocket science, for God’s sake – and he’s unable to talk to a girl without a stupid grin on his face and butterflies in his stomach.

He triple checks the calibration, pulling himself along like he’s climbing a ladder, waiting to speak as he hears shuffling on the other side of the line. He knows she’s probably slipped off her shoes and pulled her knees to her chest as she goes over the solar sunrise reports, equally bright colored nails sticking out from beneath her skirt and a Starbucks cup – something he craves, second only to how he wants her; to join him for dinner, forever, her pick – at her elbow. She goes quiet for a minute, and he wonders if he’s lost her.

(He ignores the panic in his stomach at the mere thought; how do you find someone again when you never had them in the first place?

Theoretical is a big part of their working lives; things only a handful of people would try to understand, and all for their own reasons, even if they came together for the greater good in the end.

He’s tired of theoretical; tired of the _what ifs_ and the _say whens._ )

He swallows and clears his throat, actually starting a bit when she comes back on the line with worry catching in her voice. “Oliver? Are you okay?”

“Fine,” he rushes to assure her. “Everything’s fine. I just, uh…” He takes a deep breath, stutters over what used to be a perfectly simple – and often expertly executed – transition into the possibility of something more, and hangs his head; Tommy would be doubled over laughing right now if he saw how uncool Oliver Queen was playing the game they’d both perfected. “You got any plans after the holidays?”

“Not really,” she says, voice relaxing as the conversation starts up again and he proves himself sound. “I’m covering Christmas, of course, so everyone can be at home with their kids, and that’ll max me out on overtime until the New Year, so I’ll be off the rest of the week. Gonna hang with my girls Sarah, Alison and Cosima.”

He doesn’t recognize the names. “Your sisters?”

The burst of laughter makes him physically startle, and his heart races even faster for a second. The woman was going to kill him. “Felicity?”

“I forget you’ve spent the last five years in training modules and planning sessions,” she manages, and he starts laughing along with her, amused by her merriment. “They’re characters on a TV show.”

He laughs genuinely after that. “It any good?”

“Only the best thing ever.” She waits a beat and then ventures, “You could always come over and we can binge watch it together. I think you’d really like it.”

The stupid grin amplifies. Somehow, he manages to keep his voice even. “I’d like that.”

“So would I,” she says softly, and then says, “It’s time.”

There’s shuffling on both ends as he moves toward what Felicity termed the Lido deck: a small porthole toward the front of the ship where the other members of his team will monitor him during his spacewalk. He positions himself in front of it, moving almost like he’s treading water, and he hears the beeps of her pass code and FOB keys as she makes her way outside.

“Three,” she begins, “two…one.”

He waves down toward Earth, knowing she’s doing the same thing on terra firma, and for once in his life, he can’t wait to get home.

(When he lands the shuttle ten days later, she’s the one that guides him in: _come on home, Oliver._

It’s again fitting, for that same night, she invites him into her house and her heart, and it, not the billions of miles of uncharted territory and precipice discoveries, is the one place he never wants to leave.)

fin


	18. left of center

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It – they – have barely started, and yet she somehow knows this is going to be the most painful thing she ever does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the Olicity Hiatus Challenge on Tumblr. Prompt: break his heart to save him trope.
> 
> Contains spoilers/speculation for 3x01.

He finds the bomber, delivers him to Lance’s doorstep and then proceeds to hers.

Despite the stitches on her head and the ache in both her body and her heart, she meets his smile, feeling the tips of her ears burn when he leans down to brush his mouth against her temple. She stands aside wordlessly and lets him in, feeling his presence behind her as they walk up the short staircase to her living room as she does whether he’s in the room or not – heavy, pressing, weighted.

This time, though, it hurts.

It – _they_ – have barely started, and yet she somehow knows this is going to be the most painful thing she ever does.

“You want some tea, or…?” she finds herself asking, fidgeting like she hasn’t done since the night she found him in the back of her car and he found his way into every facet of her life.

He shakes his head and she motions to the couch. He’s the epitome of relaxed, and she the antithesis; it feels as off-kilter as they’ve ever been, and she takes a deep breath when he takes her hand in his, trying to steady and prepare herself, but it comes out a hiss.

The gentle concern radiates off him in waves and instead of comfort brings tears to her eyes; she’s wanted him to care like this for longer than she hasn’t, but for all the words she’s going to say, it’s his that have been rattling around in her head.

_Because of the life that I lead…_

Because in the end, it will always be about that life, and the lives – plural – he saves living it. And it’s not just the nameless, faceless citizenry, either. It’s Diggle, a soldier without a battlefield; Roy, a tornado in a canyon; Sara, an angel with her demons.

Her, isolated in uncertainty, positioned left of center.

They’d been flying so high, Daedalus and Icarus and wings made of equal parts wax and blind hope; Lance was off their trail, Laurel had been read in and working interference with the DA’s office, and Oliver had taken back QC – at least emotionally speaking – by rallying the troops like a seasoned general. He’d asked her to dinner and she’d said yes with a certainty rivaled only by a spark of tomorrow that maybe one day he’d ask her another question, this time with jewelry and on bended knee, to which her answer would be the same.

And then her world had literally exploded out from beneath her.

She looks at the traffic cam footage of him carrying her back to the lair only once before she scrubs it, and it’s when she sees the lines of police cars and ambulances racing to the scene of the bombing and him walking in the opposite direction that she realizes it’s she who has a choice to make.

She wants to try this with him, she doesn’t doubt that. She wants this; wants _him._

Starling City, however, _needs_ him.

Starling needs the Arrow more than she needs Oliver Queen.

He’d had to make an impossible choice once, and now it was her turn to do the unthinkable.

She doesn’t realize she’s crying until he wipes a tear off her cheek with his thumb, and her eyes fall shut, leaning into his touch. When she lifts her gaze back to him, there’s a sad resignation in the lines the exhaustion has etched onto his face, and her prepared speech disappears beneath an effortless, understanding silence.

“I’m sorry,” she rasps out, and he shakes his head.

“I understand,” he replies quietly, and she’s glad one of them does, because this noble thing is for the birds. Birds she doesn’t like, like that robin that perched beneath her dorm room sophomore year during finals week that she tried to shoo with a fly swatter she ended up dropping three floors.

She lets him pull her to him and feels his chuckle more than hears it, realizing she said that out loud. He rests his cheek on the crown of her head and then presses his lips to her hair, murmuring, “Whatever you have to do to be happy, Felicity, I want you to do it.”

He holds her that night, just for a little while, and lets himself out quietly after she falls asleep on the couch.

In the days and weeks and months that follow, he’s still in her periphery, always there if she needs him even as she tries to move forward (but interestingly, never _on_ ), and later, after he does go down on bended knee and she does say yes again – and, as she suspected, it’s even better than the first go around – she tells him that of all the things he’s done for other people, the best thing he’d ever done for her was give her that time and that space, because it confirmed that the only place she was supposed to be was at his side.

fin


	19. shock wave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felicity had never thought her unemployment and the family business of cocktail waitressing would ever work to her advantage, but then again, Oliver Queen did have a way of turning her world on its axis.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the Olicity Hiatus Challenge on Tumblr. Prompt: unwanted harem love trope.
> 
> Rated PG-13 (possibly R, depending on your sensibilities.)

She’s dressed in the shortest of short skirts, the most cropped of all the tops in the world, and black stilettos with a heel as high and sharp as her desire to shed them in favor of her panda flats. The glass and steel of the bar behind her presses into every inch of exposed skin as she leans against it, eyes flitting between the few pockets of light the alternating blue and white filtered strobes are illuminating, her concentration not on the reverberating bass thrumming through the club.  


She’s been undercover at Avenue, one of the first places to reopen since Slade’s siege against the city, for a little over two weeks. Laurel had tipped them off to a string of identity thefts and grand larceny, whereby wealthy patrons were being targeted by members of the staff, taken into back rooms for a little “off-the-menu” tasting, served spiked liquor and robbed blind while they were passed out. The DA’s office had been able to tie some of the stolen identities being used as aliases for members of a small syndicate out of Gotham that was apparently trying to establish itself in Starling.

Felicity had never thought her unemployment and the family business of cocktail waitressing would ever work to her advantage, but then again, Oliver Queen did have a way of turning her world on its axis.

(She shouldn’t read so much into the fact that he’d seen her weaknesses as strength; that for the first time in her life, things she’d seen as defeats were seen as a victory.

He’d seen the worst parts of her and still found them worthy; things that had bankrupted her somehow struck him as valuable – commendable, even.

She shouldn’t, but she does.)

She glances over at him, situated in the VIP lounge with a drink in one hand and a very insistent brunette near the other, and has to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing. Just as he knows every part of her –figuratively speaking, though she swears she’s caught him rubbing his fingers together whenever he’s near her, and she’ll be damned if he wasn’t, instead of yearning for his bow, itching to touch _her_ – she’s come to be able to read him like an open book, and right now, in size 72 bolded Arial font, he’s screaming his desperation for this mission to end.

He meets her gaze from across the room, and despite the dimness and the din, she swears she sees something flicker in his eyes. His eyes rake over her not for the first time that night – it had been the first time he’d seen her in her new work clothes, as he’d previously only monitored her from a nearby surveillance van, and she’d always been changed into more casual, comfy clothing by the time he’d show up on her doorstep to discuss the intel she’d gathered each night.

It had started feeling, though, like it wasn’t the mission he wanted to debrief. Not even close.

Being around Oliver has always felt like a live wire, lightning bolts trapped in hollows, but ever since her amicable split with Ray, the charge is even more electric; pulses and possibilities. She wants to fall blindly, willfully into the shock wave, but something’s keeping her grounded, and it’s frustrating her beyond belief that she – the one who babbles – can’t put it into words.

Maybe it’s because they live minute by minute, in the past and the present but never fully in the future, and the unknown is as dangerous as it is undefined. Maybe it’s because they’ve lived on a precipice for so long that she’s forgotten how to jump with her heart forward instead of headfirst. Maybe because they’ve both forgotten not only how to tell a happy story, but also make one of their own.

Maybe because there’s no good answer to _what do you do when you have everything you’ve ever wanted?_

Because she does. Want him, on the most basic, primal levels. But she also wants him on a deeper, emotional level – Marianas Trench deep – and though he’d seemed willing to open up during their ill-fated date, she’d wondered – still does, in fact – if she was ready to take all he had to give. For as much as she’d never been intimidated by him –intrigued, yes; attracted to, without question – this daunts her; overwhelms her. This is a lesson learned only by experience; it cannot be trained for, either on a salmon ladder or a campus in Cambridge, and she’s never done well on those sorts of tests.

Her attention is diverted by Paige, one of the other bartenders. “Boss wants to see you in the office.”

Felicity nods, pushing herself off the bar. She can almost feel the heat in his gaze as he follows her, and damn if she doesn’t accentuate the swing of her hips a little more than she probably needs to.

She runs her hands through her hair, adding a little bit of the volume she’d put in when she was styling it earlier in the evening, and knocks on the door, waiting until the voice behind it calls, “Come in.”

She offers a small smile. “You wanted to see me?”

The brunette woman in front of her never lifts her pen or eyes from the papers scattered across the dress. “How long have you been working here, Felicity?”

“It’ll be two weeks tomorrow.”

A half-interested nod and hum. Then, “And how do you think it’s been going so far?”

The slowness of the conversation has her a little bit on edge, but she tamps it down as best she can. Avery Markham’s been the woman behind the curtain for the Sosa gang, calling all the shots and doing some of the shooting herself. She is someone who does not give second chances; steel and strength and the ability not just to bend someone, but to break them without so much as breaking a sweat. Thankfully, Felicity’s voice is far more steady than she feels. “I think I’ve been doing well.”

Avery finally looks up at her, brow raised in interest, clearly having expected Felicity to instead ask how the club owner thought she was performing, deferring to her power position. She leans back in her chair, and Felicity watches as her hand disappears beneath her desk. She soundlessly evens out her breathing even as her heartbeat thrums louder than the music beyond the office walls, knowing of the .40 caliber the woman kept hidden behind the wood, thanks to the surveillance device she’d been able to plant during her interview. “Do you now?”

Felicity nods. “I’ve seen a lot of return customers, and I regularly get twice the tips the other bartenders do.”

Avery chuckles, a wry smile on her face. “Yeah, they mentioned that. Not too pleased with you, are they?”

Felicity tries to seem nonchalant, shrugging. “To be honest, Ms. Markham, that’s not my problem; it’s theirs.”

“Here to make money and not friends, eh?” It turns out to be a rhetorical question, because Avery lets her Mont Blanc pen drop to the desk. “I like that in a person, doubly so an employee.”

Felicity smiles. “I’m glad.”

Avery rises from her chair and crosses to stand in front of Felicity, leaning against the desk and crossing her legs at the ankles. “How would you like to make a little extra?”

Felicity nods her interest, and the other woman returns the gesture subtly, then walks to the other side of the office, reaching above her own wet bar and pulling an expensive bottle of tequila from one of the shelves. “Go make a friend or two. Offer them this.” She hands over the bottle and Felicity studies it before raising her eyes to Avery’s. “You get ten percent of whatever I can collect.”

Felicity nods again and Avery motions for her to leave. Once the office door is shut behind her, Felicity exhales shakily, swallowing hard before finally steadying herself and returning to the main room.

She spots Oliver still in the VIP area, and sees that the brunette from earlier has apparently introduced her blonde BFF, for the newcomer is situated on Oliver’s right, her hand on his knee as she speaks to him. Several women on the floor aren’t letting the velvet rope stop them trying to pique his interest.

He’s got his arms spread across the top of the booth he’s sitting in, careful not to touch anyone or anything, looking more than disinterested, Felicity notes; it’s almost as if he’s uncomfortable with the attention being paid to him – particularly when his own is clearly elsewhere, as his eyes are searching the floor for someone.

No. Not someone.

Her.

(Oh, how things change.

How she likes them to.)

She leans against the wall as she watches the brunette run her finger from the tip of Oliver’s hand all the way up his arm, the physical contact finally forcing his gaze to her. Felicity adopts a stance eerily similar to the one the mafiosa had adopted just minutes ago as she watches the other woman lean in and whisper something into his ear, hand dropping to his upper thigh. He looks from her grasp back to her face and back again, but on the way, he locks eyes with Felicity, and it’s show time.

Except it’s so much more than that.

Instantly, the sparks those girls are trying to throw are engulfed by the conflagration of a connection reestablished – this time, it’s not unthinkable, it’s undeniable – enflamed by the heady heat in his eyes, clearly seen with their closer proximity, as he takes in how the skirt and shoes make her legs go on forever. She tousles her hair again, the movement pulling the fabric of her shirt up even further, exposing a tantalizing strip of milky white skin. She bends her arm at the elbow, cradling her head in her hand, and she can see him strain, muttering something under his breath when she licks her lips.

She takes that as her cue, turning around and heading back to the bar for a moment. She gathers some salt, shot glasses and limes, and, after checking that the coast is clear, switches out the drugged bottle for a clean one. More conscious of her own kinesthetics than she’s ever been, she saunters over, smiling her thanks at the security guard as he lets her pass.

(What happens next is not her proudest moment.

It will also be the catalyst for many more important moments, which is why she will never regret it.)

She bends over, putting the tray on the table, lifting her eyes but not her body so that he’s got a decent view down the front of her shirt. “On the house,” she says in a low, sultry tone – at least, that’s what she’s going for, even if this is feeling less and less like pretend – but makes no move to leave.

(After all, what’s the point in her running when all roads led her back to him?)

The brunette huffs. “Thank you,” she says in a bitingly dismissive tone.

Oliver holds up a hand and tries to extricate himself from the physicality surrounding him. “Just a minute,” he says, just a hint of playboy lasciviousness in his tone, but that’s not what Felicity notices; not what resonates most in between the cracks of electricity in the air, so sharp and effusive she can taste it on the back of her tongue. Instead, it’s the way his pupils are widening and contracting, the little hitch in his breath that give him away, that tell her he’s tired of pretending, too, because in the walk from the wall to his side, that place she didn’t realize was home until she’d left it, she’d reaffirmed he is her truth in a world of lies.

She knows his tells because they’re no longer anteing up.

They’re all in.

It’s becoming harder and harder to remember why they’re even in this place, that they have a job to do, because finally, _finally_ , their lives can be about unstoppable forces and not immovable objects. They are collision, cohesion; synchronicity among the scars.

But they _do_ have a job to do, and she wants – _needs_ – to do it well, because after that, they’ll finally have the time to jump off that ledge that no longer feels like the end of the road but instead the beginning of a path they can and will traverse together. She quirks a brow, waiting for him to continue. Instead, he reaches and unscrews the cap to the bottle, pouring a shot for himself and her. She barely hears the disdainful tsk of the brunette beside him; doesn’t feel how the room shifts when the other women realize they’ve just been outdone by the help.

(He’ll tell her later they never stood a chance.

He should know, because when it comes to Felicity Smoak, neither did he.)

She picks up the shot and raises it, toasting him wordlessly, but then acts on a wicked impulse, capturing his forearm gently when he reaches for the salt shaker. She puts her own shot down on the table and sprinkles the grains along the pulse point of her wrist, and then slowly and deliberately extends her arm to him.

He doesn’t blink and she barely breathes as he catches her wrist and drags his tongue along the line of salt dotting her skin. She can’t suppress a shiver, and her full lips part as he tosses the shot back and chases it with the lime, never once letting go of her hand.

It’s like the air’s gone out of the room, but it’s also the biggest breath she’s ever taken. Her stomach clenches in anticipation and appreciation, and she pulls her bottom lip between her teeth when he finally releases her, motioning to her shot.

She smiles sweetly at the blonde on his right, who lets out a disgusted sigh but moves nonetheless. She sits and then tilts his chin away from her, exposing his neck. She pours the salt and goes in for the kill.

She can feel his pulse, steady and strong, beneath her lips, and for a moment drops the bravado, eyes sliding shut as she thinks, not for the first time, how close she’s come to losing him, both as the Arrow and Oliver Queen. She brushes her nose against his cheek and his hand finds her knee, rubbing soothingly in silent affirmation and reassurance. She licks up the column of his throat, feeling more than hearing his sharp intake of breath, and then downs the shot, wincing just a little bit as it burns. She sucks on a lime before discarding the rind, and after placing a hot kiss behind his ear, she stands, gathers the salt and limes, and heads down the three short steps to the main floor, tossing an inviting look over her shoulder.

(It seems to take him forever to get to her.

The symbolism is not lost on her.)

When he’s finally at her side, his hand slides to her hip, pulling her tightly against him, hands burning the exposed skin at the small of her back. He nuzzles her hair out of his way as she guides them to one of the private rooms, and his hoarse whisper is broken in the best of ways. “You’re killing me here.”

She turns, resting her forehead against his and smiles genuinely then, that same smile she gave him the night of the date that never was and yet fundamentally changed everything, and he returns it so earnestly and fully that her chest contracts. And then his lips are on hers, strong and all-consuming, hand sliding through her hair and cupping the back of her neck to hold her closer.

As she does – will always do – she meets him halfway, wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling their bodies flush against one another. He groans, and she takes the opportunity to slide her tongue alongside his.

He nearly drops the bottle of tequila but eventually fumbles for, and finds, a ledge behind him. As soon as the glass hits the counter, his palms are spread over her back and he’s holding onto her for dear life, and it most certainly will be one if she’s allowed to kiss him like this.

Necessity pulls them apart after another minute or two, and she’s left panting and tingling from head to toe. Oliver seems just as shattered, and she half-groans, half-whimpers when he whispers, “I want you so fucking much right now.”

“You have me,” she finally manages, and the next kiss is painfully gentle because they both know they’re not just talking about tonight.

They still have to finish what they’ve started here, though, before they can resume that which has been waiting for so long – something that, deep in her bones she knows started before he ever came into her crucible with a shot up laptop and a shit lie – and she guides him to the couch set up in the room. He tosses his wallet on the side table, lined with credit and debit cards they’ll be able to track once they’re cloned, and pulls her onto his lap, holding her by the waist while she pours them another drink.

This time the salt goes across her chest, and his stubble burns in the best possible way. She cradles his head to her, and he dots kisses up to her collarbone and then around her shoulder, pausing on the scar she has from the night Tockman shot her. He runs his thumb over the puckered skin and then raises his eyes to hers, searching for forgiveness he never needed to ask for.

She kisses him again softly, reverence and sanctity, and then leans back enough to be able to grab the hem of his black t-shirt. She pulls it over his head and runs her nails lightly down his abdomen. He’s the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen, not scars or stories, but survival. She places a kiss over his heart, and then with a mischievous glint in her eye, curls herself so she can sprinkle the salt closer to his navel. She watches him carefully when she lowers her mouth to his abs, a little bolt of pride sliding across her backbone when he clenches his fist in the leather of the couch. She tosses back the shot, making a face again as he swallows, and he chuckles.

She shrugs, but the smile on her face is bright. “I prefer wine.”

His fingertips skirt up and down her bare arms and she shivers. “You know, the contents of the wine cellar were one of the few things I kept from the house.”

“I do remember hearing something about that,” she says, a playful lilt to her voice.

“I don’t suppose you’d like to arrange a private tasting.” He leans forward, nipping at her earlobe. “We have to find out which is the best complement to how _you_ taste.”

She groans, undulating gently against him. “So not playing fair.”

He turns serious for a minute, cupping her cheeks and moving her head gently back so he’s looking her straight in the eye. “You know this isn’t a game, right? It never was.”

She smiles, leans forward and kisses him again, pouring everything she’s felt but left unsaid over the last three years. He smiles against her mouth, and she feels him relax beneath her. “Though,” he murmurs, lips still touching hers, “if it _was_ , I’d say I won. Big time.”

“Is this where I start playing ‘We Are the Champions’?”

He laughs outright and she grins fully and playfully. “It’s appropriate on so many levels, though!” she insists, and he pulls her back to him, and her heart soars when he mutters, “I love you so much.”

“Then please pretend to pass out so we can get out of here.”

In the end, they put a stop to the bad guys, but more importantly, they put a start to them.

fin


	20. a place to land

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When the pieces finally fall into place, it’s Barry Allen to whom Oliver will be indebted for the rest of his life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A birthday present for the wonderful Cassie. 
> 
> Contains minor spoilers/speculation for 3x01, "The Calm."

When the pieces finally fall into place, it’s Barry Allen to whom Oliver will be indebted for the rest of his life.  


They’ve been living at a hundred miles an hour, chasing his sister and QC even though they know there’s nothing faster than the speed of their leaving. He pushes himself to the brink, and it’s Felicity that pulls him back from the precipice when he gets too close to falling.

(The irony is, it’s those months with her — sleeping in her guest room, waking up to her singing songs from her teenage years [he’d had “Mmbop” stuck in his head for three days after that] as she makes coffee, pouring her some wine and sitting out on the small porch that leads to her backyard, her smile brighter than the super moon above them — that causes him to tumble head over heels.)

They start and stop a few times, tripping over both the newness and the inevitability. There are a few dinners where her foot slides up his calf and his fingers lace with hers; a few walks back to the car where his arm is around her shoulder and hers is banded about his waist, thumb hooked through a belt loop. 

(There’s one or two really, really great makeout sessions on the couch where he looks up at her, sitting in his lap, flushed and fiery from his mouth on hers, and wonders if this is his true welcome home from purgatory and perdition.)

They’re put on hold when Sara tracks Thea down, though he collapses to his knees in disbelief and relief, and she crouches with him, holding him to her and murmuring words against his temple. He all but crushes her to him, this remarkable woman who’s put so much poetry into his pain; has made it bearable. 

Has reminded him that it’s not enough to just be alive. He has to live.

Has made him realize there’s only one person he wants to do that with.

(He just looks at her, because there are no words.

She understands anyway. 

That’s good, because he’s really not sure how he’ll ever thank her.)

They focus on Thea for awhile and then turn their attentions back to QC. It takes close to a year, but they’re able to salvage at least part of it, and when Walter calls to tell them they’ve been successful, Oliver picks Felicity up and twirls her, reveling in the laughter echoing in his ears and the way his heart seems to be beating out her name in tribute and in thanks. 

He puts her down and kisses her forehead, then says in a low, husky whisper, “Have dinner with me.”

She chuckles. “We have dinner together every night.”

He opens his eyes and looks down at her, shaking his head at the teasing glint in her eye and slight smirk on her face, even as his heart races a little bit at the hope that’s just coming off her in waves. “I meant like a date.”

"A date-date?" she replies, lacing their fingers together, and he’s back in that restaurant with that deafening terror when he screamed her name and heard nothing but silence, saw nothing but darkness, but when she tugs on his hand, brings him back to her — because he will always find his way home — he relaxes. "We survived," she says softly. "And we’re still back here anyway."

(There’s no place he’d rather be.)

"Is that a yes?" he finally asks, and she grins, nodding.

"Gotta make you work for it," she teases, but there’s a heaviness that settles at the base of his spine when he realizes there is nothing he wants to dedicate all his time and energy to more. 

So he calls Barry Allen, asks to hire The Flash out for the night, because Digg’s at home with the baby, Roy’s with Thea, and Oliver refuses to be interrupted.

The Flash watches over Starling while Oliver Queen realizes all his Arrow training and previous relationship experience can’t prepare him for falling in love with his best friend.

(It’s okay, though; she’s always been a place to land.)

They end up in his old office in QC, and he watches as she walks to the window and surveys the city; coming together; not whole just yet, but not as broken either. 

(She slides her fingers into his after he joins her, and then he tugs her to his side, pressing a kiss to the top of her head, because the look of pride on her face isn’t just for Starling; it’s for him as well.)

He’s still financially unstable, so their dinner is Kraft Easy Mac and a bottle of Two Buck Chuck from Trader Joe’s. It’s the complete antithesis of what he’d planned for them when they reached this point, what they’d started on that ill-fated date two last chances ago, and yet somehow it works. They don’t need linens and fine china and sommeliers (well, yes, they do, she argues, and he tries to make a list of all her favorite wines as she rattles them off before deciding she pretty much just wants to drink all the red wine in the world. He’s fine with that for as long as she’s willing to have her at his side. Where she belongs.)

They don’t need candles or roaming violinists or three forks whose use needs to be deciphered. 

They just need to sit shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, body warmth and the scent of her perfume wafting toward his nose, as close physically as they have been emotionally for longer than either had realized.

They just need each other. 

That night, the only thing burning in Starling City is his kiss on her mouth and her hand in his as she leads him to her bedroom.

fin


	21. shatter me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Daddy, why are you wearing green eyeshadow?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from releaseurinhibitions on tumblr.
> 
> Title taken from the Lindsey Sterling/Lzzy Hale song of the same name.

Automatically, his hands go to his face, and sure enough, there’s a little grease paint left alongside the exhaustion in his eyes. He rolls it on his fingertips as his stomach does the same; it’s because of that mantle, because of that mission, that his son was put in danger tonight.

From the other side of the hospital bed, just as she did for Connor tonight, Felicity saves him. “Don’t worry about it, bud,” she says in that soothing, healing voice, one that should feel wrong in a world of cutting, broken glass but that both Queen boys cling to nonetheless. She runs a hand over his head, centering both herself and Oliver in the knowledge that the boy’s okay.

This boy he almost lost tonight, so soon after he’d learned of his existence in the first place.

Oliver’s hands still shake by his side as he tries to slow down his heart rate and his breathing, watching Felicity calm his son, this child that she too has grown to love. She pulls out Connor’s gaming system from her bag and despite his ordeal, the little boy smiles, eventually jabbering on about which level he’s close to completing, leaning ever closer to Felicity until he puts his head on her shoulder and his eyes begin to droop.

She doesn’t hesitate, and unbearably gently, slides him over in the hospital bed he’ll be sleeping in tonight just for observation, and then pulls herself onto the mattress. Oliver hears the clatter of her shoes on the floor as she toes them off, and she maneuvers herself against the pillows, pulling Connor safely and closely against her side. She reaches down and covers both of them with the blanket, pressing a light kiss against his forehead.

(He’s still too shaken to breathe in their connection as he normally does. She’d been almost as shocked as Oliver when Connor’s mother showed up at his door, but she’d never once looked at either of them differently. Instead, she’d pulled out her tablet, downloaded some game, and proceeded to sit with Connor on the couch for hours while Oliver and his one-time love interest hashed everything out.

Connor had, of course, fallen in love with Felicity from the word go.

Like father, like son.)

She holds out a hand to Oliver, and it’s mostly on instinct that he moves, coming to sit in the seat she’s just vacated. She laces their fingers together, and he leans forward, resting his forehead against hers.

"He’s okay, Oliver," she whispers fiercely. "You got to him in time, and he’s okay."

He shakes his head vehemently, nausea sliding through him, circling and coiling around his failures. “You found him in time.”

"Look at me." She tugs on his hand. "Look at me.”

He raises his eyes to hers, and her expression softens. She cups and caresses his cheek. “You saved him, Oliver. You saved all of us.”

(The doubts have never pierced him this sharply before, but oh, how he wants her to make him believe.)

He doesn’t find words for a long time after that, nor does he find sleep. Instead, he watches as two of the most important people in his life rest, their hands linked and his on top of them, wondering how he’ll ever get over the fact that despite his intent and efforts and training, he’ll never truly be able to keep them safe.


	22. strangers in a strange land

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All she really remembers about being six is the way her father always smelled like Turkish Gold cigarettes and how soft her old hand-me-down purple and orange Popple was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from boofadil on Tumblr. 
> 
> Companion piece to "Say You'll Haunt Me."

She doesn’t remember the lines on his face or how the sunlight picks up the hint of gold in his blue eyes — her eyes, as a matter of fact. And yet here she is staring at them, staring at him, standing right next to Oliver, her past and future colliding.

She rises slowly from the chaise on which she’s been sitting, sliding her sunglasses down her nose. Her brain is whirring to a stop awaiting a hard reset, and her breath gets caught on the remnants of her childhood, lost when she lost him.

She’s seen a lot of things in her twenty-eight years; done even more. But this is something she just can’t process. It’s bad code, indecipherable jargon, and she’s no idea how to translate it.

(She’ll learn later that not everyone can find the words like she can, like she and Oliver do; sometimes there just aren’t any.)

Oliver moves to her side when she instinctively puts a protective hand on her stomach, and she feels steadier with his hand in hers, but she remains stunned into silence for a long moment, looking her father up and down and wondering which one of them is actually the stranger in a strange land.

(It’ll turn out that they both are.)

She feels her facade crack a little when Sam finally speaks, voice wavering. “You’re so beautiful.”

The question spills out of her mouth like a detonation. “How are you here?”

He smiles a little, and another memory comes unbidden: her first baseball game and a treat at the seventh inning stretch: ice cream in a plastic hat, one she held on to until she was a teenager and the talisman became too much. “I live here. Part of the time, anyway.”

Her hand tightens over Oliver’s then, because the inevitability in the circumstance overwhelms her like the waves crashing onto the shore not twenty yards from where she’s standing. He shifts, taking his left hand from her grip and, turning, slips in his right, moving his other fingers to the back of her neck and rubbing slightly, knowing those caresses in that spot center her when she’s most off-kilter. She swallows a few times, mind having gone blank as to where to go from here; asking herself if she even wants to go.

"Oliver tells me congratulations are in order," her father says gently. "That’s wonderful."

She looks down at where her wedding set lies just above her belly button and on the swell that’s just starting to become noticeable. She already feels so much for her child, this miracle she and Oliver have made, and already can’t imagine her life without her baby. When she looks up at Sam, she sees the pain he’s trying to hide behind his smile — it’s one she deciphered a long time ago, just after “Felicity Smoak? Hi, I’m Oliver Queen.” — and it’s that which releases the tension in her chest. She sees the remorse, sees the lost last chances, and in his silence, she hears the request for forgiveness he doesn’t feel worthy of.

(They do say girls tend to marry boys that remind them of their father. She doesn’t mind being a cliche this time.)

"I tried to find you," Sam confirms, and Felicity can feel the emotion welling up in her throat at the obvious suffering he’s endured; it’s not time but experience that’s put those lines on his face. "I got custody, but you’d already moved out to Vegas. I tried to get custody there, too, but…" He scuffs his sandal through the sand. "I never forgot, Felicity. I never stopped loving you."

(She can’t blame the hormones for the tears that come then.

She doesn’t regret those tears, either, because for the first time in over twenty years, her father’s the one to soothe them out of her.)


	23. that which the mountain sends forth (returns once more to the mountain)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You're saying you didn't plan this?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from puzzledhats on Tumblr.
> 
> Title from a quote by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

He looks incredulously at her. “You think I planned us getting stuck in an elevator?”

She shrugs, but there’s a lightness to her eyes that gives away her amusement, and it pulls back what little fight he’d had in him into nothingness. “You’re the one who’s been complaining all week that we haven’t had more than five minutes together.”

He takes a step toward where she’s leaning against the wall. “So I broke down the elevator on the way to one of the most important meetings in this company’s history.”

Her fingers play with the edge of his tie, and it’s no accident that her palm brushes against his belt buckle, and she’s not disappointed when his hips readjust, coming closer to her. “You’ve done stupider things.”

"Mmhmm." He leans down, lips skirting feather light against her jaw before he presses a kiss behind her ear, the shiver that runs through her automatically pulling his hand to her hip; the heat spreads as he widens his fingers, and he matches her smile.

Her thumbs slide through his belt loops but he still doesn’t kiss her properly — because he wants to tease her, she’s sure, and not because they’d agreed to keep everything between them private and out of the office. Instead, he presses his mouth to her pulse point, sucking gently, before moving to the other side. He nuzzles her earring out of the way and wraps an arm fully around her, and she puts her hand on his chest, just above his heart. She can feel it beating heavily, and somehow instinctively knows it’s not borne of their intimacy.

"You’re going to do great," she says, pulling her head to the side so she can look up at him. She moves her hands to smooth out his tie and jacket, the light from the yellow backlit panels that surround them bouncing off the diamond solitaire on her left hand — the first thing successfully built in their brave new world.

He looks at her with uncertainty written plainly in his features, and she presses a gentle kiss to his lips. It’s become a pattern for them, whether he’s clad in a business suit or his leathers; a quiet but pervasive reminder she is with him no matter where he roams, and on his weakest days, it’s her strength that keeps him going.

He slides his other arm fully around her and just holds her, and she listens as his heartbeat slows. “I’m proud of you,” she says quietly. “And they would be, too.”

He sighs then, not out of frustration but absolution, and the tension he’s been carrying in his body for days — maybe years — finally dissipates. She smiles against his chest, careful not to get any of her lipstick on him, and squeezes one final time just as the elevator car lurches slightly and begins moving again.

He walks into the boardroom with his head held high and confidence in his step, and she tells maintenance not to rush with the elevator repairs.


	24. but for the grace of god go I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Oliver Queen walks out of the darkness and into the light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little gift for hope27 because. Short and pointless, but I hope enjoyable all the same.

When he lets himself, he feels everything.  


In time, he drowns in her instead of the mess he made; pulls himself harder and higher than any salmon ladder to make himself worthy of the man she deserves — the man she knows he could be, the man he wants to be, because finally he understands it’s not just Felicity who deserves his best, it’s all of them, himself included.

In her absence he learns he is the kind of man he’d worked so hard to purge the city of — callous and cold in his single-minded self-preservation; a man with no plans beyond the next day’s carefully calculated chess moves. 

He learns he wants to plan. 

He learns he wants to live.

He learns the only way he can do that — really, totally, put his heart and body and soul into it and live — is with her, because he’s already given her those things.

He’d give her more if she lets him.

By the grace of god, she lets him.

In the end, he gives her everything.

It’s not easy. It’s choppy like the seas of Lian Yu on the worst summer cyclone days when the sun disappeared behind the blackness. It’s shaky like the ground beneath Starling and Merlyn’s earthquake machine. It’s bloody and dirty and loud and hard. But he’s survived all that before, and will do it again, time after time, because he’s finally got time. And there’s only one person he wants to spend it with.

He asks her to marry him the day after their goddaughter is in her first holiday play at her preschool, playing Mrs. Claus. It’s two in the morning, he’s perched on their kitchen counter and she’s babbling about Coca Cola’s impact on Santa Claus imagery to distract herself as she sews stitches into his skin — ones he earned not as the Arrow, but as Oliver Queen helping run down a mugger who stole an old woman’s purse during the hustle and bustle of the shopping days before Christmas — and his plans to ask her on the last night of Hanukkah fly out the window, because he doesn’t feel pain in that moment, not in his hand or anywhere else, for that matter. The only thing he feels is unbridled joy spreading warmly through his chest that they’re here, they’re finally here; the way his face aches when he grins unabashedly down at her, everything good in his life; the heat of his fingers on her skin as he settles her more securely between his legs; her contented sigh on his face when he leans down and rests his forehead against hers. 

The words trip coming out of his mouth, but not because he’s nervous or uncertain; quite the opposite. They trip over reach other because they can’t get out fast enough; can’t get to her fast enough. He knows the feeling well. ”Marry me.”

She shudders beneath his hands, sucking in a shaky breath. “Oliver —”

"I mean it." He leans back and lays everything bare; reminds her with a heavy look but a light heart that everything he is, was and ever will be is hers in their entirety. He fishes the ring out of his jeans pocket; he’s been carrying it around for days for some reason; a reminder, perhaps, a remembrance of the things he could have lost forever but that came back to him somehow. He sees tears in her eyes and has to swallow back his own emotion as he slides the solitaire on her left hand. "Will you do me the honor of being my wife?" 

She takes his face in hers and kisses him for all she’s worth; for all they’re worth, and happy is the man who once bore the crown he ultimately decided was too heavy for his head. But for her, and with her, he will bear anything; feel, say and do anything.

She leads them to their bedroom, and for a little while, there is no greater sound than the band of his ring on her finger crying out in staccatoed unison with its wearer, metal against headboard. 

(It’s replaced by “You may now kiss the bride” some eight months later. It’s another lesson she teaches him, and the first they learn together as husband and wife.

And that’s the best feeling of all.)


	25. forever is our today

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: coffee

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trying to clean out the prompts in my Tumblr inbox whilst the muse is cooperating for once in his life. 
> 
> Title from the Queen song "Who Wants To Live Forever" (though I'm much more partial to the Emily West cover.)
> 
> As always, thanks for reading!

She comes into the foundry at 3:45 in the morning the day after her mother leaves, folding her fingers over each other like she did the time they met at a coffee shop, voice as small as he's ever heard it. "Can I --" She takes a moment to clear her throat, compose herself, and he almost winces because he's supposed to be the one who wears the masks, not her. Never her. Nonetheless, when she straightens her shoulders and looks him dead in the face and asks, "Can I still talk to you about my day?", he's nodding before the third syllable is even uttered.

(He wants so much to talk about not just today but tomorrow, whisper pleas for atonement and absolution into her skin, for she seems to be the truth, the light and the way, and he is back in a very dark purgatory without her; a hell of his own making.

He's been wrong about so many things before, but he's never felt like  _he_ was the one who should've detonated in the ashes of the aftermath.

Until now.

Until  _her_. 

She's changed so many things; been the outlier, the asterisk. He worries about what else he's missed when she's been right in front of him.

Is determined not to let history repeat itself.)

"Of course," he says softly, and she slides in to her chair, swiveling it enough so she can roll over to the little bed she'd bought. They sit knee-to-knee in silence for a moment and he watches as she rubs at where her glasses are perched on her nose. Hesitantly, tentatively, he puts a hand on her leg, willing her to know, in spite of his shortcomings, that he is always a safe place for her, a haven in a hurricane world. She laces her fingers with his mostly on instinct and sighs heavily. "You know the one thing I kept thinking while she was here?"

It's not a question he's supposed to answer, so he sits quietly and lets her finish in her own time. "I wanted to know why she didn't come to my college graduation." She shakes her head, and a few stray droplets that must've gotten caught on her hair from the light shower dampening the walk from her car to him slide down her neck and darken the blue of the sweater she's wearing. "I was the first person in my family to even  _go_ to college, and she couldn't make the effort."

(He's a hypocrite for thinking less of Donna Smoak for not going the extra mile for her daughter, he knows that. It's why the biggest fight he's ever taken on is the one to make himself worthy of this moment, any moment.

All the moments.)

"I walked around campus after the ceremony," she continues, a shiver going down her spine, and he squeezes her knee in encouragement before heading to the coffee maker and brewing something hot to help warm her up. "Saw all these kids with their families, taking pictures and planning to meet up for dinner at the Pizzeria Uno on Comm Ave, and I was just...alone." She chuckles sardonically. "Some things never change."

"Felicity." He doesn't intend his voice to be as soft as it is, the tone identical to the one he'd used when he'd said her name in a hospital hallway eight months ago, and he certainly doesn't intend to crouch down in front of her, tilting her chin up with his index finger, but he does not fight his instinct -- that's how they got in this mess in the first place, he remembers with a sting worse than the circumstances under which he'd received any of his scars -- and does both. "You're not alone."

She searches his eyes for something. and he lets her look, because his armor is chinked, his walls are down, his defenses are breached, and he's willing to go once more into the fray if it means coming back out of it with her trust of him intact.

(He's willing to wait however long it takes for her love to return as well. A lifetime, because it won't be really be one until she's in it.)

"You're not alone," he repeats, "and I'm proud enough of you for the both of us."

His heart stops in his throat when he sees her eyes fill with tears, and he runs his thumb gently over one that escapes down her cheek. "MIT was lucky to have you." He takes a deep breath, then cups her cheek, and his skin sings when she leans into his touch just a little bit. (It's enough.) "And so am I."

She offers a shaky smile -- the gratiude, however, is cemented -- and then says quietly, gently dismissing him and the discussion for now. "Coffee's ready."

It takes another year for  _them_ to be ready, but when they are, they go to Boston in October for alumni weekend and she laces her left hand with his right as she sips at her Dunkin' Donuts coffee and uses their linked hands to point out various buildings, regaling him with the story behind the pot brownie incident when someone calls out to her. 

She stops and turns, and he's made himself read her well enough that though she doesn't outwardly start, the momentary tightening of her hand around his raises his own hackles. 

"Justin!" she says as a man with sandy hair jogs toward them, a lilt in her voice Oliver knows is insincere but that seems cheerful to the rest of the world. "How are you?"

There's a half-hug and a plastered smile on Felicity's face, and then she gestures to Oliver with her half full cup. "Oliver Queen, this is Justin Whiting. We lived on the same floor freshman year."

"Well, some of us lived more on the lacrosse field than in the actual dorm," Justin says and everything clicks into place. Oliver sizes up the man in front of him, and he doesn't see a trace of a college athlete anywhere, not anymore. And while he understands the guy being irrationally, irrevocably in love with Felicity, he has to work to tamp down the instinct to go "angry face" on him for bothering her then as he did.

(He wonders sometimes what kind of person he'd be had they met before. 

Mostly, though, he concentrates on being here now; on being better with her as much as he wants to be better  _for_ her.)

A curvy redheaded woman and little boy about six meander to where they're standing, and Justin puts a hand at the small of the woman's back. "My wife, Melissa." He ruffles the child's hair. "And this monstrosity is Max. This is Felicity Smoak. She helped your old dad not flunk Chemistry."

Max holds out his hand, which Felicity takes and shakes heartily. "Hi, Ms. Smoak," he says politely, and then repeats the gesture to Oliver. "Hi, Mr. Smoak."

Felicity chokes on the sip of coffee she'd just taken, and instinctively Oliver rubs the space between her shoulder blades, then leaves his hand at the nape of her neck, thumb rubbing against the freckles there, because he knows it soothes her. He shakes his head when Justin goes to correct his son, because it's not a big deal -- even if the idea does send his heart racing a little bit.  

(He's wanted a lot of things in his life, been given most of them outright, but forever with her is something he's only just realized he'd started hoping for somewhere between Queen Consolidated and Queen Mansion -- somewhere between _hi, i'm Oliver Queen_ and  _so he took the wrong woman --_ and is determined to earn.)

They chat for a little bit longer, and he and Felicity share an entire conversation in a singular, silent look when they see how Max's entire being goes wistful when he hears Oliver and Felicity have tickets to that evening's Red Sox game at Fenway and end up offering their tickets so he and his dad can enjoy the game. Max nearly knocks both of them over in thanks, wrapping an arm around each of their torsos.

(He sees something in Felicity's eyes when he glances over at her after smiling down at the exuberant little boy, a flash of a future, a dream drawn in haze and hope but that feels like it could be as corporeal as the child in their midst, and again he lets her see the truth he sees in  _her_ , and the promise that whatever he is, whatever's left of him and whatever he could be is hers.)

They watch the game from the Pizzeria Uno on Comm Ave that night, walk back to their hotel to the sound of the distant cheering crowd, and when a thank-you card of crayon and construction paper shows up on her desk at Queen Consolidated a few weeks later -- addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Smoak -- both letter and drawing hang on their refrigerator when she gets home. 

(Eventually, their save the date card gets hung next to it. And still further down the line, a sonogram.

He makes sure Donna Smoak shows up for both.)


	26. I'll Love You Forever (I'll Like You For Always)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She's not losing a daughter; she's gaining a son.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Terribly sorry about the double notifications, you guys; the wonderful RosieTwiggs pointed out a huge error in the previous draft. We should be okay now. I hope. This is why you should never write fic at four in the morning. 
> 
> For hope27, for all the happiness she's brought us.
> 
> Title from the book of the same name by Robert Munsch.

The whiteness that surrounds her should blind her, particularly against a darkening sky, but she pays it no mind. Instead, her eyes are fixated on a changing room door, marveling at the fact that they’re actually _here._

Her index finger swirls around the top of the champagne flute as she thinks back, not to her own wedding, but instead reminiscing about her little girl – for that’s who she’ll always be – and the wandering, rocky path they’ve taken, sometimes together and sometimes not, and she is beyond thankful they reached the finish together.

(There’s a pang in her chest, though;  today is the only time she feels sorry for her ex-husband for having chosen to miss this moment – _all_ the moments.

She can’t really be mad at him, though, because he gave her Felicity, a gift she’s fought to be worthy of for twenty-eight years.)

She stands when she hears the dressing room door open, and the tears start anew when she sees Felicity exit. The bridal shop attendant has a smile on her face and the train in her hand, while Felicity is running her hands down the intricate lace from the cap sleeve to the small, jewel adorned belt sitting at her waist.

She steps up on the pedestal to look at herself in the wraparound mirror, and both girls are, pretty much for the first time in their lives, completely speechless.

Felicity catches her mother’s eye in the reflection. “What do you think?”

Donna still can’t speak, and a shaking hand comes to rest against her mouth as she tries to collect herself. Felicity carefully steps off the rise and crosses to where she’s sitting, pulling her into a hug.

“Don’t cry,” she pleads softly. “If you cry, I cry, and then where will we be?”

For a minute, Donna’s not cradling the back of Felicity’s head in an exclusive bridal shop, the appointment having been made by Thea Queen as a “welcome to the family” present – though her exact words may have been more along the lines of, “You’re choosing to spend the rest of your life putting up with my ridiculous brother; might as well look good doing it in Amsale” – instead, she’s trying to soothe a newborn at three in the morning, pacing from one end of an impossibly tiny apartment and near tears herself. She’s in Felicity’s childhood bedroom, trying – and failing – to console her now that they know Daddy’s not coming back. They’re snuggled up in a pillow and blanket fort on one of her rare days off, reading the newest Harry Potter book until it’s well past Felicity’s bed time. She’s in the even tinier apartment they move into after he leaves, again in Felicity’s bedroom, with its fully painted lavender walls and glow in the dark stars above Felicity’s bed – the only one in the house, but Donna had no problem sleeping on the couch, because her daughter deserves to receive something rather than continually losing everything important to her – trying to bite back a grin as Felicity starts to feel the effects of the painkiller her dentist had prescribed after her wisdom teeth were removed and rambles even faster and more incoherently than normal.

(She is everywhere and all-consuming at all times; has been from the day they met.

Donna Smoak may not be much, but her daughter is everything, and she values the fact Oliver knows and cherishes that.

Loves him for it, actually.)

She gives her daughter one last squeeze and Felicity straightens, turning back to the wall of mirrors. She stares at herself for a long time, hands still wandering, and one of the spotlights catches the solitaire on her left hand, arcing prisms around them.

(It’s a symbol if there ever was one; this is their pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, riches beyond measure, but still not as priceless as Felicity.

How she ever got so lucky to have her, Donna will never know.)

History repeats itself in how short a time it takes them to get to her wedding day; it feels like it’s gone by in the span of one breath, a blink of an eye, much like Felicity’s childhood had, sliding underneath the night into endless tomorrows, and, Donna is again brought to tears when she sees Felicity stand up from the chair she’d been sitting in as the hairdresser finished arranging her curls so they fall across her shoulders brushing against the lace that rests there.

The photographer is snapping picture after picture, as are the bridesmaids – Oliver’s sister, baby Sara’s mother and a doctor named Caitlin – and after he’s caught multiple angles, he turns to where Donna is standing, who remains somewhat aghast and distinctly overwhelmed. “Can we get Mom over here for a minute?”

This time, she succeeds in collecting herself, smiling and walking to her daughter’s side, that place she’s always been and _will_ always be, and as the photographer starts shooting again, Felicity quietly asks her to help fastening the Tiffany charm bracelet Oliver had sent over earlier that morning.

(She won’t, but she desperately wants to snoop and read the card that had been attached to the box, because the phrase “very platonic circumstances” isn’t particularly funny, but after inadvertently reading that sentence out loud, Felicity had absolutely lost it.

She’d gotten quiet when she found a charm of a bird attached, cradling it against her chest and for the first time in decades, Donna had heard her utter a Hebrew prayer.

She did the same with the earrings Oliver and Thea had provided as her something borrowed, platinum and diamond drops that cost more than Donna will ever earn in her life, and it was then that Donna had realized the seat that would remain empty in the front row wasn’t for her ex-husband at all.)

Donna finishes clasping the bracelet around Felicity’s wrist, then helps her step into the electric blue pumps, the final touch before Donna pulls her daughter in for a tight hug.

“I’m so proud of you, sweetheart,” she whispers, emotion getting caught in her throat. “And I love you more than anything.”

It takes a minute, but finally Felicity says, “What did I say about the crying?”

There’s a knock at the bridal suite door, and Thea goes to answer it. The wedding planner steps across Felicity and her friends exchange a disbelieving but halfway giddy smile before Donna speaks. “Actually, girls, could I have a moment with the bride?”

Each attendant gives Felicity a hug as they pass, and Donna takes the opportunity to cross to her oversized bag. She can feel the tears coming on as it is, but finds solace in that it couldn’t be for a better reason.

She hands Felicity a package wrapped in purple paper that is eerily close to the shade of her old bedroom walls and says, “I used to read this to you every night when you were a baby. “And as much as I hope you will use it on my grandkids,” she pauses, a mischievous look in her eye, “which I will expect in about nine months, by the way,” – she and Felicity chuckle in tandem at that one – “it’s also to remind you how much I love you – then, now, and forever.”

Felicity pulls at the wrapping, and this time she can’t hold back a sob, all but launching herself into her mother’s arms as the latter repeats the title: “I’ll love you forever, and I’ll like you for always.”

This time it’s Donna who urges an end to the crying. “You’re going to be late if you need a makeup retouch.”

For some reason, it makes Felicity laugh. Donna has come to know the sound well, and can identify it immediately. “Oliver related?”

There’s a wistful look in Felicity’s eye when she answers, “Isn’t everything?”

They somehow manage to make it to the venue on time, and Felicity is oddly calm as they wait in a small hallway to the side of the ballroom. There’s a serenity about her, a peaceful halo, like she knows this was inevitable – has known that even on the darkest, hardest days when she’d tried to forget – like she knows all the storms they’ve weathered were nothing more than rain because they got through it together.

The string quartet starts playing the processional, and Thea throws a wink over her shoulder to her soon-to-be sister-in-law, one Felicity returns, even if she can’t wink to save her life. Donna steps to Felicity, linking their arms. She can smell the roses of her bouquet and the exorbitant amount of hold spray they’d used to keep her hair looking great, but above all she picks up the scent her daughter had as an infant, that inexplicably beautiful, comforting aroma she’d know anywhere.

The planner closes the doors so they can turn the corner and get situated behind them for the wedding march without being seen. Donna squeezes Felicity’s arm and teases softly, “We can still bail. You just say the word. We’ll go get burgers at that Big Belly place or something.”

Felicity laughs. “You really liked that place, huh?”

(They’d ended up there after the rehearsal dinner, squeezed into the back corner of the restaurant.  Donna had looked up from her cheeseburger to find Oliver’s tie and two top shirt buttons undone, his arm slung casually around Felicity’s chair, fingers absentmindedly rubbing the base of her neck as he and John Diggle talked. Felicity’s hand had been on his knee as she and Caitlin spoke a mile a minute in a conversation in which Donna understood every third word, and she’d marveled not just at how comfortable they were together, but how they fit together like puzzle pieces; like lighthouses and shores.

It cemented the fact for her that she’s not losing a daughter; she’s gaining a son.

She’s been vacillating since in choosing the moment in which Felicity was most beautiful – in that Amsale dress or in her happily ever after.

So, yes, she really liked that place.)

“Ready?” The wedding planner asks, and though Felicity gives a simple, silent nod, Donna knows the answer is “I’ve never been more ready for anything in my life.”

There’s a small whoosh of air as the doors are pulled open, and the shuffling of fabric as everyone rises. The song switches, and for the second time – and the last – Donna helps Felicity walk, only this time, it’s down the aisle.

She doesn’t think Oliver blinks or even breathes as they approach, and a peripheral glance indicates Felicity’s the exact same way – until they come to that empty chair Donna will be sitting next to. Felicity wraps her hand around the metal bar of the seat back, then brings her hand to her mouth for a kiss before resting it against the wrought iron.

With a small sigh that sounds oddly like a prayer, she crosses the few steps to where Oliver is approaching from his place under the chuppa,  and his eyes are even more blue with the tears collecting in them. On instinct, Felicity pulls her hand from her mother and cups his cheek. He leans into the touch, eyes sliding shut, and Donna just knows its déjà vu all over again for them.

(Call it mother’s intuition.

She may not know book smarts, but she knows her daughter, and to her, the title of _mom_ is far more precious than any Master’s or Doctorate.)

Felicity turns to her mother, and Donna pulls her in for one last hug as a Smoak, and repeats the gesture with Oliver. “You take care of my girl,” she whispers, then chuckles against his shoulder. “Though I guess she’s your girl now.”

Oliver remains softly serious, releasing her and looking her in the eye. “Always.”

 Donna turns to walk to her seat , but still hears the murmur Oliver presses against Felicity’s hair. “I don’t know how I got so lucky.”

 _Join the club,_ Donna thinks, _and welcome to the family._


	27. i wake up (but only to fall)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "For having secret identities and world-saving afterhours jobs, they are absolute shit at cloak-and-dagger relationship stuff." Or, five ways Oliver and Felicity could be found out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the remarkable lizook12. Happy birthday, lovely. I know you only asked for the ball pit part, but this is what came out when I tried to write that. I hope you like it nonetheless.
> 
> Title from Fleetwood Mac's "Big Love."

i.

Diggle notices first.

(Of course Diggle notices first. He knows the monumental shift between front lines and bottom lines; has felt the cutting and healing of war and peace and the sharp survivability of today versus the smoother if still unbelievable transitions into tomorrow.

More obviously, though, he notices how Oliver and Felicity take special care to stay football fields away from each other, seemingly out of the blue; notices how they enter the foundry _exactly_ five minutes apart and _definitely_ notices the appearance of an overnight bag hurriedly half-stuffed under the small cot in the corner that clearly hasn’t had a lot of use in recent weeks  the one time he walks into the lair when they’ve both beat him there – for having secret identities and world-saving afterhours jobs, they are absolute _shit_ at relationship cloak-and-dagger stuff.)

They still not-so-furtively glance at each other, though; to check in, to have silent but complete conversations, to settle and bolster their strength in times of weakness, and it’s clear that though they stand physically apart, they have never been more together.  Even in a world of super-soldiers and lightning-fast men, things he’s seen that have tested the boundaries of what he’ll believe, he doesn’t think there’s a single thing that could truly separate them.

(He believes in _them_ , though. Always has, whether it’s been apart or together.

Together is better.  He’s known it a long time, and is relieved they’ve finally realized it, too.)

He feels no guilt whatsoever in the amount of fun he has reveling in just how horrifically obvious they are about it, however, and when Lyla begins insisting on weekly dinners to catalogue both injuries and intel, they share secret smiles across the room as Felicity talks about anything and everything to baby Sara and Oliver pays more attention to that than the dishes he’s supposed to be washing, because the more things change for some, the more they stay the same for others; history repeating itself can be a beautiful, beautiful thing.

(There’s more than one definition of _partner_ , and sometimes it’s more than “I love you” could ever be.

He doesn’t need to hear the latter because he sees the former day in and day out, and when the only easy day is yesterday, it gives him hope for the future.)

He finally says something some three months later when the fern disappears – his money as to its place of relocation is on Felicity’s apartment – bringing the last of his morning coffee to his lips to hide his smirk but not his words. “So do we need some kind of signal, or have you two gotten the sex-in-the-lair thing out of your systems?”

An arrow goes flying off the grindstone, but the loud bang that echoes through the foundry is the result of Felicity forgetting she’s under her desk trying to fix the wiring connection to their mainframe.  Oliver goes stock still in shock, while Felicity comes up sputtering half-words.

Where one ends, the other begins.

He’d be touched if it wasn’t so damn funny.

“That’s not – _We’re_ not –“

Diggle stops her with a hand, a look, and a single word. “Felicity.”

Oliver gets up then, walking past him to stand behind Felicity, a strong hand on her shoulder, thumb rubbing the nape of her neck. She automatically relaxes into the touch, and Oliver takes a breath before meeting Diggle’s eyes. “We’re together.”

He doesn’t try to hold the laughter in at that. “No shit.”

Felicity’s mouth drops open. “How long have you known?”

John loves this girl, he really does. “Day one, give or take.”

He watches as Felicity nervously turns her hands over in front of her. “And you’re…okay with it?”

“Just…warn me if you need to do anything other than gaze at each other.” He tilts his head in disbelief when Felicity’s mouth opens to protest that she doesn’t _gaze_ at Oliver, and she shuts it again. Oliver, however, eyes down at the woman in front of him and speaking louder than anything any of them could ever say, breaks the silence.

“Digg, I’d really like to kiss my girlfriend now.”

“Mazel tov,” he deadpans, making his way upstairs in search of more coffee.

* * *

ii.

She lives a life built on details. Hell, she’d be good at noticing the small things even if she wasn’t a lawyer, given that she was raised by a detective.

That detective once told her that small never equals insignificant, so when Felicity shows up to help surveil the latest in a string of Arrow-investigated crime scenes in a shirt Laurel knows belongs to Oliver, it doesn’t slip her notice.

She’s been aware of their connection for a long time; maybe even before _they_ realized how strong it was. They strike her as steel forged in fire; the littlest hint of sunshine after the greatest thundering of storms. A truth painstakingly learned in a world built on lies.

Love created from hate.

It seems simple, but it’s anything but, just as it seems like it's just a shirt, but it’s not really _just_ anything.

Somehow, in her heart of hearts, Laurel knows it’s _everything._

(That’s something else her father taught her: always go with your gut.

She’s learned other things from him, too, about how to build a life after you’ve destroyed yours, how to put one foot in front of the other and eventually how to heal after the hurt; how to be the phoenix that rises from the ashes.  As she looks at Felicity relaying the information she’s hacked from various city databases, on a rooftop in the middle of the night guiding men in masks amidst the madness but still somehow all business in her boyfriend’s shirt and steely determination with the glowing silhouette of the city – and people – they’ve all lost so much to ensure was saved behind her, Laurel finds she can’t be jealous or angry about the fact that Oliver’s found _his_ heart in someone other than her.

As the steam rises to encompass Felicity’s shadow against the night, something again out of nothing, Laurel’s only happy he’s found peace; found that healing, that love, and hopes one day she will, too.)

The blonde finishes relaying the information and looks to Laurel with a satisfied, accomplished smile, one the erstwhile Black Canary can’t help but return, especially when she takes note of the smoother edge to Oliver’s tone when he confirms receipt of Felicity’s intel. She still feels a little unsure in this role and this mission, but she finds she holds on to Felicity’s hope just as tightly as she imagines Oliver holds onto Felicity, and finds almost as much comfort in it.

They traverse down the stairwell back to street level, and Laurel clears the alley before Felicity joins her. They wait at their previously agreed upon rendezvous point, and Laurel hears Felicity’s ponytail swish against the fabric of her jacket as she looks up and down the street for signs of the boys. They can both still hear them in their earpieces, but she has to smile at Felicity’s obvious relief when they finally appear in front of them.

(This is what she’s been fighting for the past year and a half, she realizes; what they’ve been fighting for for well over three.

This is something to believe in.)

Roy and Diggle head to get their respective modes of transport back to the foundry, and Felicity’s already halfway to Oliver by the time Laurel starts walking to meet him. This time she notices the intent of his hand as it automatically reaches for Felicity, feeling its meaning even though she is not the recipient; understands his need to run it down the other woman’s arm to steady himself in the knowledge that she’s unharmed despite her being on simple reconnaissance. Something goes through her when she sees Felicity’s eyes go momentarily wide in warning, causing Oliver to stutter half a step backwards as he stops mid-momentum.

They’ve put so much on hold for this mantel, this burden they bear; lay aside their lives to put them on the line for people who won’t ever know who they really are.

Her father also taught her to respect the truth above all else, and it’s that which spurs her forward now.

Laurel smiles in the darkness that somehow doesn’t feel so black anymore. “I’ll just go find Dig, shall I?” she says, amusement in her voice. She starts toward the sidewalk, speaking softly to Felicity as she passes. “That’s a cute shirt, by the way.”

(She laughs outright into the night when Felicity looks down and curses not-so-quietly and definitely not under her breath.)

* * *

iii.

Thea jumps when she hears an unfamiliar voice outside her office, searching frantically for anything that could enhance her own weaponization.

Then, as she listens, the blood pounding in her ears settles and she tries at length to identify the speaker.

The words are quiet, the tone gentle, and she moves silently to the door, pressing her ear against the opaque glass as she tries again to make out what is being said. When she can’t, she opens the door without a noise and takes a half-step onto the landing, looking down onto the Verdant dance floor.

It’s not the sight of her brother that takes her aback. Instead it’s the way he’s holding himself: relaxed, shoulders down and back; amused, an actual _smile_ twitching on his face and one he’s not trying to pull back in the slightest.

In fact, if she didn’t know any better, she’d have to call him downright charmed by whatever conversation he’s having, not a word she’s used to using on him, but from the outright happiness in his features – something she wants to see again more than just about anything – she may have to start trying.

“No, babe, the _other_ right drawer…that’s my girl.”

The pet name makes Thea’s eyebrows flirt with her hairline, but it’s the unexpected onslaught of warmth that has her reaching for the metal railing in front of her. They haven’t had many truly happy stories to tell over the past few years, and though her brother is clearly keeping the origins of this one a secret from her for whatever reason, she finds herself wishing like the little girl she once was that this one goes on for many chapters to come.

(Snippets of past conversations come to her in the silence as he listens to whomever’s on the other end of the phone, his smile never wavering; “this girl is…different” and “let me know if you need trendy places to propose” whirl around in her mind like the spiro-graph she got for Christmas when she was six because they were never intended to feel this true, but somehow it feels oddly like a kaleidoscope, of colors and futures and beautiful things out of chaos, and it doesn’t blind, it enchants.

For all the taking back of her life that she’s tried to do, for all the control she’s tried to exert, she finds she likes the sound of this unknown madness – or lack thereof – a lot more.)

She unabashedly watches Oliver for a few minutes more, watching as he slides onto one of the stools at the bar, finger running in the grooves of the tabletop, and she marvels in how he looks so much younger; so much like the Ollie she loved and lost.

(She feels the inexplicable urge to hug whoever found him; thank them for giving her a little bit of her old family back.)

It strikes her seemingly out of nowhere that he could only be talking to Felicity; Felicity, whose name and smile Thea remembered from the hospital, whose steadfastness and heart Thea noticed at her mother’s funeral, whose slight awkwardness Thea was endeared by when she helped Oliver move his few belongings into the loft, whose determination and genuineness Thea marveled at when they once again regained control of the company, whose presence in her brother’s life has always struck her as unwavering, even in the most tremulous of times – even when no one truly understood or appreciated just how much that was true.

(Her brother’s lied to her about a lot of things, but his keeping her in the dark about his newfound felicity – on more fronts than one, it seems – doesn’t sting.

She’s as unabashedly happy as he seems to be, and more trusting than she’s been in a long time, sure in handing the last of her family over to someone who cares for him just as much.)

Her own smile grows when Oliver laughs outright and says, “I’ll be home in half an hour,” and then after a pause drops his voice to a tone that makes Thea feel like she’s walking in on a very sweet, very private moment and causes her to step back into her office and shut the door halfway, finishes, “I love you, too.”

She can’t hide the grin from her face or her words as she calls, “Who’s down there?”

There’s a slight clatter and she chuckles a little bit, envisioning her ever careful big brother tripping over himself and into her bar in surprise. “It’s just me,” he yells back, and she waits a beat before returning to the landing.

“Well, hello, just you,” she says in greeting, biting the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing at the way he’s favoring his right foot, cell phone momentarily forgotten on the counter.

“I thought you were going to be in off-site meetings all day,” he says, and Thea arches an eyebrow.

“Were you sneaking in to drink for free from my bar?” she teases, walking to the steps to descend to the lower level.

“You know me; just a poor schlub who can’t meet the door price at his own sister’s club,” he replies easily, and she crosses her arms with a smile, leaning a hip against a hightop.

“How about lunch on me then?” she finds herself saying. “Poor schlub’s gotta eat.”

“I know a really great burger place near here,” Oliver answers, and she nods in agreement.

“Let me just go grab my bag,” she says, jogging back up the stairs. “Oh, and Ollie?”

“Yeah, Speedy?”

She nods to the countertop. “Call Felicity and invite her, too. I think I have some baby pictures saved on my phone I think she’d love to see.”

(She doesn’t bother hiding her laughter after seeing his jaw drop in shock.

But she’s right; Felicity really loves seeing the baby pictures.)

* * *

iv.

After thirty years as a cop, nothing much surprises him anymore.

That all changes when he’s sitting in a patrol car at 3:24 in the morning, watching the Medical Examiner prepare to transport another Vertigo death to the hospital.

He hates to call her; he knows she’s been running ragged this week after the reappearance of the drug on the streets _and_ working a full-time job at the newly reestablished Queen Consolidated, but she’s been instrumental in linking the victims and potentially narrowing down a source, and despite the fact that he knows she’d called it a night less than two hours before, he finds himself dialing her phone, an apology already forming on his lips.

Instead, he gets a decidedly male “’lo?” in his ear, one that makes Quentin pull his mobile away from his ear to double check that he had indeed called who he’d intended.

Identifying the voice takes less than thirty seconds, a combination of the fact that he’d heard it numerous times – _too_ many times, really – over the years, and because he’s seen the way Oliver Queen looks at Felicity Smoak, and he instantaneously knows that’s the only person who could be answering her phone in the middle of the night. It’s the same way Quentin imagines he’d looked at Dinah all those years ago, like they were inevitable in a world whose only certainty was its _un_ certainty; like it was the two of them against everything, steadfast in the storm.

Like they were the only two people on Earth, and even more than that, the only two people on Earth for each other.

(He’d noticed it when the two stood behind Walter Steele at the renaming ceremony, Oliver’s hand on Felicity’s back, and the shared glances meant to be secret but that still caught Quentin’s notice.

He’s seen the worst of people; _been_ the worst of people when he tried to find salvation at the bottom of the bottle, believing in nothing, including the people around him, pushing away the ones he held most dear.

He’s also clawed his way back; redefined his role in the larger law and order of life, and in that, found his own brand of happiness. Felicity is all heart, though, and he knows that the heart wants what the heart wants, so while he’s surprised – and a little concerned; it’s the dad in him, whether she needs one or not – he’s also pleased for her.

She’s one of the good ones, and it’s time someone did right by her. If she thinks Oliver Queen is that someone, then Quentin will try to be okay with it.

Try being the operative word.

It’s the dad in him, after all.

Or so he’ll claim.)

He clears his throat before speaking. “Queen.”

He sounds still half-asleep and like he’s answering on autopilot. “Yeah?”

This time, Quentin can’t help but chuckle. “I need to talk to Felicity, son.”

There’s shuffling and Quentin can hear a faint “’Licity,” followed by Felicity muttering “five more minutes, Mom” and then there’s a clatter, followed by chaos.

“Who is it?” she asks, voice tinny in its distance from the receiver.

“I’ll tell you when I find the phone.”

“Find it faster!”

Shuffling, and then Felicity’s voice again, raised slightly in panic. “Oliver, this is _my_ phone. Oh, my God, you answered _my_ phone!”

“It was ringing! I was sleeping!”

(He shouldn’t be laughing at a crime scene. God help him if one of the rookies sees him.

But this is funnier than the time he was working patrol and came across two old women beating one of the drug dealers in their neighborhood with their handbags, so he figures no one can blame him.)

“Detec— _Captain_ ,” she corrects in a rush. “I am so—“

“It’s fine, Miss Smoak,” he says gently. “I’m sorry to disturb you so late.”

“It’s early,” she replies, waving away his apology even as she’s still a little bit breathless and flustered, and he has to smile at her forever forgiving nature.

“I could really use your help on something.”

“Of course. Do you need me to come down to the station?”

“That’d be great,” he replies, turning the engine over. “I’ll meet you there. Oh, and Felicity?”

He hears more shuffling and the distinct click of a lamp being turned on before she answers. “Yes?”

“Put that boy to good use and have him bring us some coffee. The precinct’s is terrible.”

(He’s still laughing when she forgets to hang up for a minute, too preoccupied with screeching her mortification over Oliver’s attempts to calm her down in the background.)

* * *

v.

He’s greeted with an armful of three-year-old, and Roy audibly utters an _oomph_ as Sara launches herself at him.

“Unca Roy, Unca Roy, we went to the Fun Fair today!”

He swings her under his arm like a football, closing Digg and Lyla’s front door behind him. He nods a hello at Oliver, who’s uncorking the wine in the adjacent kitchen, and smiles hello at his hosts as they set the table. He deposits the toddler on the couch and then collapses on it next to her, fingers dancing towards her sides, eliciting a squeal that makes him wince even as it makes him grin wider.

These family dinners still feel strange to him; hell, having a family still feels strange to him. But he sees the bright innocence of the little girl in front of him, and it reminds him of the wins to come after the war, the victories after the defeats, and it helps him get through each day. “Did you have a good time, Monkey?”

Sara nods vigorously. “They had a ball pit!”

He answers her like she’s just said the most extraordinary thing in the history of mankind. “They did?!”

She nods just as enthusiastically, and Roy swears he’s getting a headache from her emphasis. Their attention is pulled when Felicity enters the living room from the small hallway leading to the Diggles’ washroom and says, “Did you show Uncle Roy the pictures we took _after_ the fun fair, Sar-Bear?”

She reaches for Felicity’s phone and expertly opens her photos, scrolling through. He sees a few from the trip he knows they took to the zoo, but Sara starts at the beginning of the day, enlarging the first to show a shot of her waving from the middle of the ball pit, and then a capture of her feet as she apparently dove under. The next is blurry, and Roy looks down at the little girl beside him. “Where’d you go?”

Sara answers seriously. “I was _hiding_!”

“What were you hiding from?” Roy asks, pulling down her striped top as it rides up her tummy.

Roy notes that Oliver stops short in the kitchen, and then sees Felicity shaking her head with almost as force as Sara had in the exact same moment. Sara, however, does not take note of either, whispering loudly, “It’s a _secret_.”

Roy starts to tickle her, knowing she’ll give up anything if he does. “You can’t tell _me_ the secret? Your own Uncle Roy doesn’t get to know the _secret_?”

The little girl laughs, jumping to her feet and away from him. Roy continues to reach for her, asking, “What was the Monkey hiding from, I wonder?”

Oliver enters the living room then, asking loudly, “Who wants wine?”

Sara’s heard over his determination. “I had to hide! I saw Unca Ollie and Auntie Lissy _kissing_! Kissing is _gross!”_

(Sara’s laughter has nothing to do with his own. Not really.

The looks on Oliver and Felicity’s faces at being outed by a three-year-old, however, are enough to send Roy into a fit of laughter that lasts long past their dinner.)

fin


	28. out of the mouths of babes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I'll give you something to handle," she mutters.
> 
> "Promises, promises."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From a domesticity meme on Tumblr. snowssmoak prompted "pregnancy sex."
> 
> This chapter is rated M for ~~I'm mortified I wrote this~~ ~hot stuff I hope Donna Summer would approve of.

"Unca Ollie?" Sara asks from her bed, a nightlight silhouetting her shadow as she pushes unruly curly hair from her eyes. 

"Yeah, Monkey?"

"Where do babies come from?"

Oliver freezes in the doorway, and his strangled silence only enhances the gasp of mortified disbelief that comes from the phone in his hand, the line open so a traveling Felicity could say goodnight to their goddaughter as was their custom on their weekly Friday night visits. 

He’s able to gather himself after a moment and forces his voice to be as even and neutral as he can. “I think that’s a question for tomorrow, Monkey. Good night.”

He shuts the door to her protest and takes Felicity off speaker before lifting the phone to his ear and starting back down the hallway toward Digg and Lyla’s living room. “What’s that famous quote people sometimes use in situations like these? Ah, yes:  _I told you so_.”

"Gloating is not cute on you, Queen," Felicity huffs from the other end of the line. "I thought she was just going to be excited that we found out it was a girl."

"She’s six and has you as a godmother. Of course she’s going to ask intelligent, pertinent questions."

"I  _think_  that was a compliment?” 

"If it works for you, go with it," he teases gently, stepping into the kitchen and grabbing a bottle of water. "I’m just saying that I find it highly suspect that you wanted to tell her while you’re halfway across the country and could pretend your phone dropped the call, leaving me to handle the inevitable awkward questions."

"I’ll give you something to handle," she mutters, and he grins, shutting the fridge and walking to settle himself on the couch. 

"Promises, promises," he replies, tinges of victory still lining his voice.

He doesn’t get to ask his serious follow-up about how his girls are doing, because Felicity beats him to speaking again, and when she does, every hair on his body stands on end. There’s a heat, an electric current, running beneath her words, and he knows before the third syllable is out of her mouth that he is in big,  _big_  trouble.

"Do you remember that day, Oliver? Do you remember how you fucked me against the wall in the foundry? How I came so hard I screamed?"

"Felicity…" He doesn’t know if he’s begging her or warning her. 

Her voice is torturous and silky. “You came up behind me when I was in my chair in the foundry, remember? I turned around and you pulled me to my feet by my hair.” She groans, and he imagines her pressing her thighs together. “God, I love when you do that.”

He hears shuffling and shifting on the other end of the call and his eyes slide shut as he fights to stay still himself, not to mention keep his voice calm, even though he knows she realizes what she’s doing to him — and sort of doesn’t care. That she can continually surprise him even after three years of marriage — and six and a half in a partnership that sometimes defies the word as much as it defines it — is as life-affirming as he’s ever known. 

(Though, to be fair, there are some days he wishes someone would have warned him about how exhausting and enthusiastic his wife was going to be in pursuing him physically once she entered her second trimester, because she’s  _that_  pregnant woman with an increased libido, one who  _needs_  to come more than she doesn’t.

He can’t say no to her, which doesn’t bode well for how he’ll discipline the daughter she’s carrying. And he doesn’t put up much of a fight — or really mind, frankly — though he does feel guilty about her catching him looking longingly at the long-abandoned bed in the corner of the foundry; what he wouldn’t do some weeks for an uninterrupted night of actual  _sleep._

But now she’s doing  _this_ , and he half hates himself for wanting that distance, because now he wants nothing more than to have her close.)

"Do you remember how wet I was for you? Do you know how wet I am for you now?"

His resolve slips; his voice becomes hoarse. “Tell me.”

"I’m so ready for you," she says, and in his mind’s eye he can see her fingers slip beneath the sleep shorts she wears to bed, dragging her index finger through her folds and they shudder out a breath together as she circles her clit for the first time. "I’m so fucking wet for you." There’s a broken hitching of her voice before she continues. "God, I want your mouth on me. I love wrapping my legs around your head and holding you to me, watching as you make me come."

He scrubs a hand over his face and clenches it into a fist against the couch cushion next to him. He glances over at the video monitor displaying the feed from the closed circuit in Sara’s room and confirms the little girl is asleep, but then notes the time and realizes Digg and Lyla aren’t due to be home for at least another hour. 

"You’re killing me," he says unnecessarily, and she half-chuckles when his frustration leaves him in a guttural growl. Her amusement lasts as quickly as it started, though, and then she’s back to moaning his name, desperate again.

"I want you to take me from behind," she manages. "I need to feel you inside me. I want you to fuck me so hard, Oliver." 

He can hear the undulation of the hotel mattress beneath her and whispers, “How many fingers?”

"Two," she says brokenly, and he twitches in his pants.

"Add another," he replies lowly, jaw clenching as she muffles her cries into the pillows next to her. "Yeah, baby, that’s it."

"I’m close," she says, and it doesn’t matter that she’d started this to tease and turn the tables on him, that she probably hadn’t intended it to get this far, wanting to leave him high and less than dry; in a world that can be so painfully stark and devoid of color sometimes, she —  _they_  — are beautiful, light and refraction and luminescence, and he’s made a vow to bask in it every time he can. 

So he speaks again, gently and quietly and reverently, for they are sanctity and salvation despite the distance, and urges, “Come on, Felicity. I’m right there with you.”

She shudders on the other end of the phone, and he flops against the back of the couch even as other parts of him are straining, because he knows the sight and sounds of her circling her clit, which since becoming pregnant, has been more sensitive than ever before. He feels like he’s the live wire as much as the bundle of nerves beneath her finger, but sends her over the edge with, “That’s my girl.”

He exhales deeply, shakily, as she cries out through her release, and he settles into her breathing pattern as it slows. “When do you fly home again?” he asks after a few minutes. 

"Not soon enough," she says, and he laughs softly as the frustrated edge to her voice from earlier returns. 

(Upon her return, they check into a room at the airport Mariott because they simply can’t wait anymore, and he couldn’t care less about how tired he is the next day.)


	29. so this is where you are (right where I am)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He wants whatever she’ll give him, because he knows, even if she doesn’t, that he’s willing to give her anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From a domesticity meme on Tumblr. loubug19, allpartofaplan and itsamotherfuckinglovestory asked for "slow dancing."
> 
> This was written back on December 1/pre 3x09, "The Climb" so events of that episode are obviously not taken into account.
> 
> Title from "Hundred" by The Fray.

Felicity Smoak has stopped him in his tracks more times than he cares to admit.

(This is is something the little voice in the back of his head tells him will never change. 

On his worst days, he does the most dangerous thing he can think of — besides loving her — he hopes; prays it never does.)

It’s literal this time, one early Saturday morning, when he begins to descend the staircase into the lair, but unexpected movement and music bring him up short.

She comes into view just enough that he can see her hips swaying in slow, sensual circles, and he swears the reinforced steel railing may melt beneath his desperate grip as he watches her. He doesn’t even really hear the song that’s playing from the docking station perched on the edge of her desk; he’s too mesmerized by the way she moves, the deliberate resonance of even the simplest gesture is the only thing in his universe right now.

She takes her hair out of its ponytail, loosening the waves that cascade over the shoulders he wishes he could run his hands across. She’s got her eyes closed and her mouth open ever so slightly; he feels like he might lose his footing when the sense memory of her lips beneath his kicks into full Technicolor mode.

(He wants so much to go to her, dance with her, kiss her,  _be_ with her in every sense of the word, because watching her like this — so open and so beautiful and so free, so very _alive_  and a reminder why he too needs to live — awakens something buried deep in his darkened soul. It shines that tarnished armor, crumbles at the foundation of the walls he’s put up, because her slow dancing in the matching grey worlds of the foundry and his morality is simple; it’s quiet and it’s the little things, but it’s also the loud and the complicated and the everything, and he wants it all.

He wants midnight kitchen dance parties and mock fighting over song choices on long car rides. He wants the gentle movement of her hand in his as they sway through the rare uneventful days, and the percussive profundity of the bossa nova nights. 

He wants first dances in which she’s wearing white and 3 AM trying-to-soothe-a-colicky-newborn with some random, embarrassing ’90s boyband song because it’s the only one in their sleep-addled brains that they can remember all the lyrics to dances. 

He wants little-girls-dancing-on-Daddy’s-toes dances, wrapping-arms-around-her-from-behind-and-rocking-even-though-there’s-no-music dances, and last waltzes that prove with each step that there truly was only one choice to make, and that it was her.

He wants whatever she’ll give him, because he knows, even if she doesn’t, that he’s willing to give her  _anything_ _._ )

He watches her for a few more minutes, trying to commit everything to memory, and only starts down the stairs when he hears Digg and Roy approaching the door to the lair. 

(Like the one of Laurel he held to while on the island, it’s that picture of Felicity in his mind’s eye that gets him through his showdown with the League of Assassins. When they try to break him, he goes back to that place, the future he saw in her footwork, and sometimes he drifts off with various potential first dance songs in the back of his mind.)

***

Digg and Lyla pull a fast one and pretend their first dance is going to be to “Here I Go Again” by Whitesnake, and it’s on instinct that Oliver rubs soothing circles across the dangerously tantalizing skin featured by keyhole cutout on the back of Felicity’s dress when a sip of champagne threatens to come out alongside her delighted, disbelieving laugh. The song transitions into “At Last,” and he watches Felicity’s face soften as Digg and Lyla lose themselves to each other. 

Oliver’s hand rests on the back of Felicity’s chair, and he feels the shiver go through her when his fingertips brush across the nape of her neck. But miraculously she leans back, and he swears his heart stops; after months of being so far apart, she’s right here, this close, and it’s a turning point and an inevitable conclusion all in one.

There’s polite applause and a few awws when Digg and Lyla separate after the first verse, he dancing with her mother and she with one of their Army buddies. Oliver takes a chance and moves his hand to the back of Felicity’s neck, thumb rubbing near the pulse point right below her ear. She turns into him, a question in her eyes, and he stands, buttoning his jacket and then extending a hand to her in invitation. 

He doesn’t get to ask her to dance, though, because from a few feet away, Sara sees him and holds our her arms, indicating she wants to be picked up.

(“You’re a baby whisperer,” Felicity had said when the little girl was younger, after he’d raced over to her apartment when she’d called him in tears because no matter what she did, she couldn’t calm the teething infant. “I wish I could be that good.”

Sara had quieted a few minutes after he’d picked her up, and after ten minutes of walking circles around Felicity’s living room, they’d deposited the baby in the pack-and-play Felicity kept in her spare room. 

They’d stood watching their goddaughter sleep for a few minutes, Felicity’s stance and expression identical to the night Sara had been born, and he’d seen it again, that flash of everything he’d ever wanted. But this time, there was no sinking realization that he wouldn’t get it, that he didn’t deserve to get it, no excuses of fear masquerading as reasons why. 

There was just hope, that first thing she’d taught him to believe in, and it  had sparked somewhere in his chest that he could do this not only for her but  _with_  her. He’d put a hand on her shoulder and she’d instinctively turned into his touch, and it would’ve been so easy to lean down and kiss her again like he had in that hospital hallway.

They don’t do easy, though; everything has to be earned, and things left unsaid for too long have to be uttered. So he had, voice wavering ever so slightly as he approached once more to the place outside his element.

Only it hadn’t been, because loving Felicity Smoak is the biggest and best part of him, the face without a mask, the truest thing amongst the lies, and he knows how to be there even when he doesn’t want to be.

"You’re great with her," he’d said quietly, eyes never leaving her face. "And your own kids are going to love you, and…" He’d taken a deep breath, swallowed, and then looked up determinedly. "And the person you want by your side to do that is going to be the luckiest son of a bitch on the planet."

She’d raked her gaze over his face, and he’d laid everything bare; it was her decision to make. She’d made it a minute later, telling him silently when she’d threaded her fingers through his, and they’d started again right where they’d left off.)

"I think she just cut in," Felicity says from next to him, her tone warm and amused. "I still get you for ‘YMCA’, though, right?"

He looks down at her with a grin that can’t be contained, and she returns it, squeezes his hand. Even as the babysitter hired to keep an eye on Sara lifts the little girl out of her high chair to deliver her to Oliver, he doesn’t let go. Instead, he rests Sara on his hip and pulls Felicity gently to her feet, leading both girls to the dance floor. 

Sara pulls her thumb into her mouth and snuggles against his shoulder, and Oliver bands his other arm around Felicity’s waist, and the three sway to the last notes of the song. Felicity’s fingertips play with the hair at the nape of his neck, and he turns his head, pressing a kiss to her pulse point before leaning down and doing the same against her temple. He feels her grip tighten just a little bit, and his eyes close; for all the hell they’ve endured, this is heaven, and he is a sinner among saints, sacred and profane, and he tries to be worthy of the moment.

(The DJ never plays “YMCA,” choosing instead to go with The Isley Brothers and “Shout.” He tosses Sara into the air on every chorus, and over the din of the wedding guests and Sara’s exuberant giggles, he sees the sea change when it washes across Felicity’s face as she realizes this — him,  _them_  — is what she wants; realizes .they’re finally in the same place at the same time.

They dance at the reception and between the sheets that night, and the music never stops.)

***

The first midnight kitchen dance party is her doing an elaborate happy dance at his expense, and he remembers it not because of the goofy grin on her face or the ill-advised electric slide moves she does in her socks, but because that had been the moment, after he’d thrown his head back and laughed like he had few times before, that he’d blurted out, “Christ, I love you.”

She’d stopped in her tracks, glasses halfway down her nose, frozen where he, finally, was not. He’d moved to her, cupping her face and running his thumbs across her cheekbones. “I love you,” he’d repeated softly. “I love you so much.”

She’d wrapped a hand around his wrist and gone up on her toes to press her mouth feverishly against his, and though she realized later she hadn’t repeated the words back to him until the next morning, she’d made sure to let him know all night long that she felt the same.

(He’d known, though. It’s the only thing he knows for sure.)

There had been engagement twirls and a group dance of high-pitched squealing joy when they’d told Donna she was going to be a grandmother, and now there is their final dance as a twosome as Felicity enters her fourth hour of labor. Her head is on his chest, her arms are wrapped around his shoulders, and his hands are massaging her lower back as they sway through her contractions. Her breath hitches in her discomfort, but still she fights through it, and he’s never felt more helpless or been in more awe — or more love — than he is in this moment. 

"Talk to me," she mumbles against his t-shirt, and he runs a hand over the crown of her head.

"About what?"

"Anything. Everything. Just…something."

He goes back to the beginning — of him as the Arrow, of them as a couple, of that life he really didn’t start living until he set foot in the IT Department. “It was just after lunchtime when I walked into your office,” he says quietly. “You had on a pink blouse and your hair was curled but up, and you —”

"Were chewing on a pen," she finishes, her tone instantly lighter.

"It was red," they say softly in unison, and he smiles, nodding, holding her steadfastly to him. "There’s still something about you. And I’m so glad I get to be the one to try to figure out what it is."

She stiffens as another contraction rolls through her, and he knows from the lessened time between each pain that it’s almost time to leave for the hospital. “I hate mysteries,” she grumbles against his chest. “Ow.”

He kisses the top of her head. “I’ll be in charge of solving them. You just write the happy stories, okay?”

(The first chapter is autographed when they sign their daughter’s birth certificate some twelve hours later, just as the sun rises on a brand new day, and he walks their child to the window, quietly humming “Happy Birthday” as they move.)


	30. breathing space

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> But he believes in so much more now because he believes in her, in them, and finally, after dealing with that world that didn’t give a damn, of other people’s timetables and agendas, they don’t have anywhere to be but with each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of mindless fluff in the aftermath of 3x09. (Hello and welcome to denial land, I'm Effie and I'll be your tour guide.) Inspired by a reblog on Tumblr by castleincalifornia.

She’s perched on the couch and smiling around her coffee cup, buttered toast and the weekend edition of the Starling  _Sentinel_ in front of her, when he emerges from her bedroom, pajama pants slung low across his hips and a hand running through his hair.

He presses a kiss to the crown of her head in greeting before heading to the kitchen to pour his own coffee, ducking his gaze below the overhanging cabinets when he hears her chuckling. 

"What’s so funny?"

(He smiles despite himself when she jumps a little bit; though they know this is where they’re supposed to be — where they’ve _wanted_  to be, in a world that for much of the last four years didn’t seem like it gave a damn about what they wanted — they’re still getting used to the fact that they’re  _here,_ that they can have these lazy Saturday mornings, moments he’d dreamed about at times, once thinking himself weak for doing so. But she is the strongest part of him, the one thing he knows for sure, and he notices nuances about her as she does him, even things they don’t realize they do.

Then again, he’s noticed everything about her at one point or another, even when he wasn’t ready to. Now that she’s allowed him into this personal space, this inner sanctity, he reveres it as much as he revels in it.

It’s probably why they’re keeping this between them for now. Or maybe because they can’t quite believe they finally made it here. 

But he believes in so much more now because he believes in her, in  _them_ , and finally, after dealing with that world that didn’t give a damn, of other people’s timetables and agendas, they don’t have anywhere to be but with each other.)

He puts a loving hand on her shoulder, automatically rubbing his thumb over the nape of her neck, silently apologizing for starling her, before moving to sit down, deftly spearing a piece of her toast on his way past.

She half-heartedly smacks him with the newspaper, but her eyes are still alight with amusement, not annoyance at losing half of her breakfast, and he turns his head to see that she’s reading the lifestyle section. 

He groans when he catches what feature she’s cued in on, and she wiggles delightedly, unabashedly gleeful, before trying to compose her face and putting a hand on his bicep. “Number eight on Starling’s Most Eligible Bachelor List this year.” She clucks her tongue sympathetically. “Do you need a minute? A tissue? I think we have some mint chocolate chip in the freezer if you need to eat your feelings.”

He shakes his head at her, corners of his mouth turning up despite himself, and deftly plucks her until she’s settling in his lap, knees on either side of his hips. “I’ll tell you what I’d rather eat.”

"That’s a  _terrible_  line, Mr. Queen. I’m ashamed of you.”

"Now might be a good time to shut me up, then."

She rolls her eyes even as she leans down and presses a light kiss against his mouth. She links her hands behind his head and settles more comfortably on him, and he runs a hand through her hair, smiling fully when she leans into his palm when it comes to rest on her cheek, eyes sliding shut.

(He’d once thought he’d die with that image of her as the last thing he saw.

Now he knows he’ll  _live_  with it, and suddenly, forever doesn’t feel like a condemnation.)

He squeezes her waist and says quietly, “Hey.”

Her eyes return to his face, and he is again grateful for the ability to memorize the way she looks at him — looks that make him feel as unbound because he is, thanks to her, less broken, and so very, very grateful. “I love you.”

Her kiss is deeper this time, and he cradles him to her, for even this close, she is his breathing space; the moments in time where he can just  _be._  She chuckles against his lips again after a minute, and he smiles against her mouth. “What?”

"You’re  _dying_  to know who beat you, aren’t you?”

He goes with her amusement, because her happiness is the beat in his heart and the blood in his veins, and he listens to her list pros and cons of the other bachelors because he knows he’s won the most important place, and that’s right here, right now, and, always, by her side.


	31. rescue breathing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Oliver, are you sure?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From a meme on Tumblr in which the first sentence was given and I was to write five(ish) to follow. (Heavy on the 'ish.')
> 
> Prompt from releaseurinhibitions: "Oliver, are you sure?"
> 
> Part of Operation Marshmallow, aka Effie writes all the fluff whilst living happily in a beautiful land of sunshine and denial in which 3x09 does not exist.

"Oliver, are you sure?"

He grins even as his hand shakes when he extends the stick — their  _future_  — to her. “I may not have a genius IQ, but I’m pretty sure I know how to read, and that says  _pregnant._ ”

She touches her fingers to her mouth even as her other hand automatically goes to rest on her still-flat stomach, and a maelstrom washes over him when his eyes follow the movement, but for once, he’s not drowning; instead, it feels like he’s breathing for the first time — like she’s saving him again, finding him when he didn’t even know he was lost. “Oh, my God.” She looks between the pregnancy test and him and then back again. “Oh, my  _God._ ”

He doesn’t know whether he should jump for joy or collapse beneath the weight of being responsible for someone else’s whole world, so he does the one thing that’s felt natural for longer than he can remember: he reaches for the one place he’s always been safe and pulls her to him, pressing kisses across her temple, forehead and hair. “We’re going to have a baby,” he breathes, and for super soldiers and secret governmental organizations and meta-humans, it’s  _that_  which he can scarcely believe.

So he holds on to the only thing he knows to be true, his foundation, his touchstone, his Felicity in all senses of the word. She fists her hands in his shirt, and though her face is muffled against his v-neck sweater, he still hears the slight tremor in her voice when she repeats, “A  _baby_.”

He leans her back just a little bit, moving his hands from around her shoulders until his fingers cup her face, thumbs running over her cheekbones, and he breathes her in — _them_  in, a phoenix from the ashes and the calm after the storms. 

It’s not as simple as her being his reward for surviving, or even his reason for living; it’s so much more —  _they_  are so much more — but whatever they are, the black and the white, the truth and the consequences, the loud and the quiet and the spaces in between — they are  _together,_ and they’ve made something —  _everything_  — out of nothing.

She goes up on her toes and kisses him hard, fingers threading through the hair at the nape of his neck before she wraps her arms around his shoulders and nuzzles the spot between his collarbone and chin. “I love you.”  

"I love you, too," he whispers, just as he always does, because the words are meant for her alone; have been since he realized she’s the last person he ever wants to say them to. He can feel her gaze on him as he drops his hand to his abdomen, following it with his head, and he places a gentle kiss there as well. "And you," he says, and this time he’s the one who starts shaking.

She pulls him back to her and they breathe together. They just  _breathe_ , and most importantly, they believe. 


	32. yes, virginia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Are you tangled in the lights again?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from nonplatoniccircumstances on Tumblr: "Are you tangled in the lights again?"
> 
> Part of Operation Marshmallow.

He tries really hard not to laugh.  He really, really does.

(Much like when it came to falling in love with her, he tries, and he fails.

He’s never been so happy to fail at something in his life.)

She sighs heavily at both her predicament and his reaction, blowing a loose piece of hair that’s fallen out from the messy bun she piled on top of her head as they’d prepared to drag the Christmas tree they’d found — after four lots, mind you; anything less than absolutely picture perfect for her first Christmas tree just wasn’t acceptable — into her apartment.

(In reality, though, it became his, too — theirs — a while ago, though still not as long as he’s been hers.

Now they are each other’s, and despite all they’ve seen, all they’ve survived, that really  _does_  seem like a Christmas miracle.)

She huffs again, trying to step out of the knots of lights that have somehow bounded around her knees, and when she fails, she leans against the small bar between the living room and kitchen, the beams from the bulbs she’d plugged into the outlet reflecting off the menorah that had been the centerpiece to their other celebrations the previous week. “I still don’t understand why we couldn’t have gotten a pre-lit tree.”

He scoffs, readjusting the stand so the tree is featured in the windows that look out onto the courtyard of her complex. He takes a step back, careful to avoid her coffee table — though, admittedly, painful as it might have been, he doesn’t mind the scar it gave him, because it reminds him of the first night they’d been together, all  _take your time and hurry up_  — and nods to himself when he’s happy with the placement. “Real’s the only way to go.”

He doesn’t even try to tamp down the laugh that blossoms in his chest when he turns to look at her again, and she’s somehow gotten herself even  _more_  tangled. She turns a halfway withering glare on him even as he approaches to help her. “Fine. Then next year,  _you’re_  in charge of lights. I want nothing to do with this madness.”

He steps into her personal space, feels her breathing pattern change just slightly until they inhale and exhale in the same cadence — fitting, since she’s somehow always felt like the deepest breath of fresh air he’s ever had; breaking the waves after being buried beneath them — and starts to unravel the tangled lights from where she’d tried to corral them by wrapping the strand around around her wrist. “Next year, huh?”

He hears her swallow and his smile is silent but sincere as she tries to give him an out.

(One day he’ll convince her he really is all in. Not only are his cards on the table, he’ll call every ante, and doesn’t worry about how she knows all his tells, because while this is not always a game, he’s still damn well determined to win it.)

"I meant — not that  _we’ll_  have a tree next year; I mean, we could have  _two_  tress, one for you and one for me, though I don’t really know why  _I’d_  —”

He kisses her then, hands on her face and future in his kiss, and the wire gets a little tangled on his v-neck as she fists her hands in it. “Next year sounds great,” he says in a low voice, smiling just a little bit as a shiver runs through her. 

She looks up at him, backlit by the setting sun and the light everyone told him was inside him but that he didn’t dare believe in until he found it in her, a tiny smile on her face. “Yeah?”

He leans down again, their lips brushing gently against each other in a half-kiss, half-sigh. “And the year after, and the year after…”


	33. elsewhere (i believe this is heaven to no one else but me)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Is Charlotte trying to escape her crib again?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from an anon on Tumblr. Set in the stay-at-home-dad 'verse established in ["the joy in the mending."](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1293982/chapters/2998537)
> 
> Title from the Sarah McLachlan song "Elsewhere."
> 
> This will most likely be the last update before the holidays, so from our crazy house to yours, wishing you and yours a happy Chanukah, a very Merry Christmas and a blessed New Year.

She should’ve heard him coming; one of the floorboards between their bedroom and Charlotte’s has been loose since the day they moved in — a way for the house to give up their secrets even when they don’t want to find the words. But sometimes she gets myopic in her focus, sharp in a world that is doubly so, and she doesn’t move against the night, reminding more than remembering in the violet hours that slip into blue-grey dawns.

She offers a small smile at his gentle, teasing words and at being caught — not sheepish, though, for being here has never been a mistake — not taking her gaze from her daughter’s crib, but extending a hand toward where he stands in the doorway. She breathes deeper, albeit a little brokenly, when he returns to her side, that place that is as close to a definition of home as they’ve ever dared make — their own slice of elsewhere when everywhere and everything becomes too much — and shuts her eyes against the warm, bare skin of his chest, focusing on his strong, steady heartbeat beneath her ear. She swallows hard a few times as his hand finds her hair, fingers threading through it, and she feels more than hears his soothing whisper. “I’m fine, Felicity. I’m home, and I’m fine.  _We’re_  fine.”

She nods even as her stomach drops and heliotrope pictures blink against the back of her eyelids, ones that remind her about just how close that had come to not being true. A zip arrow that didn’t lock as well as they thought it had, a one-handed swing through a plate glass window with shattered glass that had cut far too deeply and far too close to his carotid, one last gasped “I love you”  _just in case_  and fourteen minutes back to the Foundry where all she could think about was him bleeding out in the backseat with a baby at home.

They’d stopped the bleeding, stitched up Oliver’s various cuts and bruises, and she’d looked at him across medical supplies and arrows and years of practice and sacrifice, and hadn’t seen The Arrow; hadn’t seen Oliver Queen. She’d seen  _her_  Oliver, her husband, her partner in all things, her daughter’s father, the man who is a hero not because he wields for the weak against the strong, but instead because he taught their toddler to fistbump and who puts up with “Yo Gabba Gabba” on a daily basis, who makes macaroni and cheese and hot dogs because it’s the only thing Charlie will eat these days, and who always has a glass of wine ready for her when she gets home from (either) work.  _  
_

She’d seen the one thing she can’t live without, and the reminders that even before she’d known him, she could have lost him all the same.

The weight of it on her shoulders is her own hood; thinking about life without him, their Charlotte without her “Da,” is a crucible that, for all the fires that have forged her into steel, she’s not sure she could endure. 

It’s not until he says, “hey.  _Hey_ ,” and pulls her fully against him, cradling her protectively, the same way he protects their little girl, that she realizes she’s started crying. She all but claws at his back, going up on her toes in an effort to draw him closer, and he bends his knees, lifting her up. She wraps her legs around his waist, but it’s not romantic; it’s desperate in its dirtiness as her whirlwind mind speeds into oblivion as she thinks about the  _would’ve_ s and the  _could’ve_ s. 

She thinks about Charlotte standing in front of a coffin; of knowing her father only as etching on a gravestone, and she can’t breathe.

He backs them quietly out of the nursery, reaching around her to shut the door, and then stands still in their hallway, just to the left of the creaky floorboard, for this is a moment it won’t betray, and rubs circles on her back. “Just breathe, Felicity. I’m right here. In and out.”

She claws and fights and pulls, finally dragging air into her lungs. “That’s my girl,” he whispers, running his hand over the back of her head. “That’s it. One more.”

Slowly, the darkness — that shroud that feels far too funereal to operate beneath — starts to lift, and she thinks back to eighteen months ago and those same words being murmured into her temple as she entered her 29th hour of labor. She remembers holding their little girl and looking up at Oliver in terror and in awe, how he’d reveled in the fact that Charlotte had the Dearden nose and Felicity’s eyes. The tears running down her face now remind her of the ones that had sprung to Oliver’s eyes when he saw the red pen she’d pulled out to sign their daughter’s birth certificate, because it was a reminder that they were always headed  _here_  even when they didn’t know they’d started a journey together.

Her breathing slows and normalizes, and he slides her down until her feet touch the floor, but he never lets go. 

That, she realizes, is the key to everything. 

There is always the threat of losing him — has been, since before he walked into her office with a laptop and a lie — but as long as she holds on, remains as something he can reach for, well, they’ve beat worse odds.

She nods once, decisively, and leans back, repeating the gesture in a silent  _"I’m okay_.” He has to check for himself, though; keeps running his hand through her hair and then gently brushes the remaining tears off her cheek. He presses his mouth to her forehead, his eyes sliding shut when she places her palm above his heart, and only after he’s satisfied does he start moving them back toward their bedroom. 

She smiles the next morning despite the hour when Charlotte wakes around six, and continues grinning when Oliver deposits the little girl in their bed and while they spend a lazy few hours as the sun rises to illuminate their little stolen patch of heaven. 

It’s enough.


	34. diminishing returns

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He wakes in a tent in British Columbia adjacent to a lake that feels more alive than he’s ever been, but he comes back from the dead at 2:44 in the morning in Starling City four days later when he sees the keeper of his still-beating heart asleep on her desk in the Foundry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently I lied about not updating this collection until after the holidays. But never underestimate the power of a prompt and procrastination.
> 
> From dumplingnooona on Tumblr: effie, is there any fanfics with oliver finding sleeping felicity in front of the computers in the foundry, or if not, could you write one???
> 
> (It also occurs to me that I've never told you _where_ to find me on Tumblr; I'm [effie214](http://effie214.tumblr.com) over there as well -- I'll pause while you flail in amazement over my screenname creating prowess. :D And again, wishing you and yours a very blessed and happy holiday season, and thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking the time to read my work. You've helped make 2014 a very good year indeed.)

He wakes in a tent in British Columbia adjacent to a lake that feels more alive than he’s ever been, but he comes back from the dead four days later at 2:44 in the morning in Starling City when he sees the keeper of his still-beating heart asleep on her desk in the Foundry.

Her shoes and glasses are off, her head is pillowed on her bent arms, and she is enveloped by exhaustion and his grey hoodie.

(He’s thankful he’s had only one thought since waking up —  _get home_ , knowing he meant to  _her_  and not Starling putting the pace beneath his feet — because now that he looks at her, he thinks he would have fallen into the abyss again had he wondered which was worse: holding on or letting go.)

He moves silently, pulling his messenger bag from across his body and wincing just a little bit as it pulls at the still-sore broadsword wound on his torso. Even though there’s no scar, he remembers the pain; knows he will for some time to come.

(At least he  _has_  time, though. That’s something.

Actually, he thinks, catching a glimpse of his clearly slept-in bed, nesting doll pajama pants tangled with the blanket toward the bottom of the mattress, that’s  _everything._

One more miracle he’s been given and doesn’t deserve.

He’ll make himself worthy, though. Of it, and of  _her._ )

The fall his heart takes when it sinks to his stomach when he sees it’s not just Felicity’s pajama pants that have made their way into the Foundry is worse than the one he’d taken less than a week earlier. Her work clothes are hanging off the arms of the training dummy tucked in the back corner behind the glass cases his and Roy’s leathers are kept in — he somehow just knows why they’re not displayed on the bar on the salmon ladder — and when he looks to the small bathroom, he can see a travel bag of her toiletries and makeup. 

He didn’t want this for her — wanted to keep her from the darkness and diminishing returns, particularly given how she’d really shown him how much he wanted to emerge from them — and as he turns to take her in fully, the guilt tastes bitter in his mouth, worse than the blood that’s stained his teeth far too many times. She’s still clad in her QC — _Palmer Industries_  — clothes, and had clearly just passed out where she sat. As he moves closer — a moth to a flame, an unstoppable force to an unavoidable object — he can see the bags under her eyes even in sleep, and sees her elbow is just adjacent to a line of coffee cups used to try and keep her awake.

(He knows the nightmares, the secrets more akin to truths and the demons that are in actuality mirror images, and he asks himself why it took him so damn long to realize and tell her she’s something he could’ve never dreamed of.)

He knows he’s been gone too long, that they had to have assumed the worst, and he’d spent the hike to the border, the hitchhiked ride in a semi to get to the jumped train it took to get back here — get back home to the place that he really didn’t know she was until he’d had to leave again — envisioning what he’d say when he saw her, and vice versa. Maybe she’d slap him when he apologized; take him in her arms when he finally — a hundred days after the fact, but maybe still not too late — promised he’d come back to her.

(He doesn’t dare hope for a kiss or words left unsaid; those things are earned, and looking down at her sleeping form, he knows he’s already asked so much of her.)

Now, though, he just wants to hold her, murmur meaningless things into her hair, because no words will ever tell her how sorry he is, how much he loves her or how his only plan right now, the only thing that matters, is to show up and  _be here_  every day for as long as she’ll have him. _  
_

He gently puts a hand on her shoulder, and she’s so deeply asleep that she doesn’t stir beneath him. He eases her up into his arms and he carries her the final steps to the bed, shaking the blanket free and draping it over her.

(He can’t stop himself from leaning down and kissing her forehead, freezing when her hand reaches out like it did just before he left, and grabs the hem of his sweater.

"I miss you," she whispers sleepily, sadly, and he has to swallow a few times before he can reply.

"I’m right here with you," he promises. "I'm always with you.")

He falls asleep himself sometime around sun-up, perched in her chair and next to the bed, and it’s nothing more than her shaky intake of breath that brings him back to consciousness.

She’s sitting up, rubbing her eyes. Her hair is a wild halo around her head and she’s curled her legs toward her defensively; he feels like a sinner in front of a saint. “You’re not here,” she says hoarsely. “You can’t be here.”

His hand physically aches in wanting to reach for her, but he doesn't, instead repeating his words from a few hours ago. “I’m right here.”

Tears are forming in her eyes but he remains still as she reaches a shaking hand toward him. She sobs in disbelief when her hand lands on his corporeal form, and then she’s in his arms, crying hitching breaths into his shoulder. 

He cradles her against him, lets her cry, but the things he murmurs against her temple are not meaningless.

 _Thing_ , really, for it’s only one sentence he utters, over and over again: “I love you.”


	35. I Feel Your Heart (So Close to Mine)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Or, five times kitchens and holidays were involved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the lovely Christa as part of the Olicity Secret Santa exchange on Tumblr. Unabashed, unashamed schmoop. Hey, it's Christmas. 
> 
> Title from the Roberta Flack song "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face."

i.

He has to stand in the foyer to take it all in when he first crosses the threshold; there hasn’t been this much life in this house in a very long time.

The noise is not unwelcome, though, nor the chaos; there is laughter and love decorating the deep mahogany walls, glittering just as brightly as the holiday decorations that have been hung. Kids with candy canes and Santa hats run around, their excitement and laughter colliding with Christmas music playing from somewhere, but it’s not a cacophony that deafens; it’s the sound of believing again.

A voice rings out over the din, and he turns to see his sister taking the steps down to the entry hall two at a time, just like she had when he’d first returned from Lian Yu. They embrace now as they did then, though it’s different, deeper, given everything they’ve survived since, and he says quietly to her, “The place looks great, Thea. You did a hell of a job.”

She leans back and beams, and though she’s seen far too much of the world – and  _his_  – he still sees the light innocence that has always colored her features to him, and it settles him in a way he didn’t know he needed. “It was a group effort,” she says, looking over his shoulder at the people who are going to make their old home a family one again; people still struggling after the Undertaking and Slade Wilson’s siege on the city, finally given the help they should’ve gotten a long time ago.

That they’re opening the house to its first occupants two weeks before Christmas – and ahead of their original January first deadline – makes it all the better.

He squeezes her hand. “Still. I’m proud of you.”

She grins even wider, and he finds himself returning the gesture. They watch the kids run around in all their glory, sharing quiet memories of sledding on blankets down the stairs and the terrible cookies they’d make from Santa with as little help from any adults as possible, marveling at their parents for finishing them despite their inedibility.

“Thank God Felicity knows how to bake,” Thea teases, nudging Oliver in the side. He rolls his eyes, but still can’t temper the delight that comes to his face, both at the thought of his blonde partner and at the unbridled joy his sister gets out of teasing him about how he, as Thea says, finally got his head out of his ass and made his move.

(She doesn’t quite understand that his first move wasn’t anything suave, or even anything intentional; it was “Hi, I’m Oliver Queen” in a cubicle a hundred last chances ago, but the one that mattered most was a kiss and a promise at the bottom of the foundry stairs when he came back from the dead – again – and vowed never to leave.)

“Speaking of…” he says, glancing down at his sister, the question dangling like  _maybe_  once had, but never will again.

“Kitchen,” Thea answers, kissing him sweetly on the cheek.  “Don’t eat all the oatmeal raisin!” she calls as he weaves his way around boxes and kids and staff trying to get everyone registered and in their own rooms.

He expects to hear the radio on as he heads toward the kitchen – apparently it’s Smoak tradition to dance when making even a cup of coffee – but instead he hears laughter and a heavily-accented, motherly voice he’d know anywhere.

He again stops short in the doorway, watching Felicity and Raisa working side-by-side at the six-burner stove, chatting away like old friends. It smells like sweets and goulash and mashed potatoes, one of his favorite Raisa recipes, one she loved when she was a little girl, and one she wanted to share with her adopted family.

It smells like  _home_.

(It looks like it, too, with reminders of his past standing next to his hopes for the future.

_Yes, Virginia_ , he thinks,  _not only is there a Santa Claus, but there’s also a god, because this feels very much like a miracle_.)

He starts moving again when Raisa catches sight of him, her face lighting up. “Mister Oliver!” She walks to him, wiping her hands on the apron around her waist, and then cups his face, kissing both cheeks.

He hugs her fully. “It’s so good to see you,” he says softly in Russian. “I didn’t know you were going to be here.”

“Miss Thea asked if I’d like to run the kitchen,” she replies proudly.

He kisses her cheek. “I’m so glad you said yes.”

She takes a half-step back, regarding him seriously. “Let me look at you.” She clucks her tongue and then he finds himself being nudged toward the tall stool placed in front of the marble-topped island. “Are you hungry? You look hungry.”

He reaches for one of the cookies cooling on the wire racks in front of him, but gets a lightly-tapped spatula to his hand instead; he hadn’t even  _seen_  the housekeeper reach for the implement, and can’t help but smile when he hears Felicity’s half-swallowed laugh at his disgruntled gasp.

Raisa shakes a finger at him. “Miss Felicity made those for the children, not you.”

“I don’t know,” Felicity says, checking the oven to see how her latest batch of cookies is progressing, and then coming to rest a hip next to where he’s sitting, smiling as his hand automatically finds her waist in greeting and running a hand down his chest in response, “he’s the biggest kid  _I_  know. And our goddaughter’s a toddler.”

Raisa smiles widely, knowingly, motioning to him with the spatula but addressing Felicity directly. “He spoils her terribly, no?”

(He shouldn’t love how quickly he’s forgotten, how Felicity leans away from him and toward the older woman as though she and Raisa have been best friends for years and have all the secrets in the world to share.

He shouldn’t, but he does.)

Felicity sighs deeply, throwing her head back in both disbelief and gratitude that  _someone_ understands. “He could give her the treasure of El Dorado and it  _still_  wouldn’t be enough.” She shakes her head, fingers reaching for the same cookie he’d tried to get earlier. Before he can register his protest, she automatically splits it in half, handing him one part still without looking at him, and after popping her piece in her mouth, says, “I told him we’d just wrap up some of my old pots and pans for her first birthday, because, babies, right? They like boxes and banging things with wooden spoons. Do you know what he did? Went out and bought the most beautiful set of Williams-Sonoma copper pots.  _I_  don’t even have Williams-Sonoma copper pots! And what’s worse –“

“He won’t let you use the ones he bought for Sara?” Raisa finishes, a laugh in her voice.

Felicity throws her hands up. “Yes! Can you believe it? Who  _does_  that?”

Raisa’s smile turns wistful and remembering. “When Miss Thea was born,” she says quietly, “he slept on the floor of her nursery every night, and when I finally convinced him he needed to stay in his own room, he snuck back in and gave her his teddy bear.” She looks at Oliver, pride and memories shining in her eyes. “Such a good big brother. And now, a good man.”

Felicity looks back at him, her hand finding his knee and squeezing. “The best,” she says softly, and he pulls her closer, lips finding her temple.

There’s a knock at the back door and Raisa looks at the digital clock on the microwave. “The rest of the groceries,” she says, handing Felicity the spatula. “Don’t let him spoil his dinner,” she warns, laughing warmly when Felicity uses the implement to salute her agreement.

As she disappears, Felicity turns her head up and finally kisses Oliver hello. He smiles against her mouth, thumb rubbing circles just above the waistband of her jeans. “Hi,” she says quietly, in that voice that she uses only for him.

“Hi,” he replies, brushing a loose strand of hair off her cheek before moving his hand to cup the back of her neck, fingers sliding across the skin at the nape. “How’d you get roped into cookie duty?”

“I volunteered,” she tells him, reaching for another cookie. She laughs delightedly when he leans down and takes a bite out of it without asking, shivering just a little bit when his tongue slides across her fingertips. “It’s been…enlightening.”

There is far too much mirth in her eyes, and his heart starts to beat a little faster; for all the things they’ve gone up against, this feels the most dangerous. He plows on anyway, because wherever she goes, he will follow; there is no place too far. “Enlightening?”

She cups his chin, kissing him once more as the oven timer sounds, throwing him a wink over her shoulder. “Two words, Oliver:  baby pictures.”

ii.

They walk hand-in-hand down the stairs in the loft, she wrapped in one of his white dress shirts and curled into his side, cheek on his shoulder and left hand on his chest, and he in low-slung pajama pants and his fingers caressing the diamond solitaire he’d put on her finger mere hours before.

(He didn’t know he could feel this happy; that love like this was more than a cliché.

Instead, it is real, the most honest thing he knows, even though they live lives built on masks and lies and spend their days and nights in shadowy corners of rabbit holes.

They are truth. They are survival. They are victory.

They are  _everything_.)

Felicity goes to stand by the huge tree Thea insisted she take part in decorating – “it’s family tradition,” his sister had insisted, “and you’re family, so go hang this up” before handing Felicity a custom ornament with the date and “Felicity’s First Christmas” inscribed on it – and the city lights mix breathtakingly with the bulbs on the tree, and he stops himself from preparing their customary, celebratory 3 AM breakfast of grilled cheese – the same thing he’d made the first time they’d made love – to watch her.

She’s not turning the ring over her finger in awe or disbelief as he might’ve expected; as he  _did_  when he bought it, when the gravity of his plans hit him – not because he was uncertain or because of the profundity of it all, the permanence – but because for all the preparation he’d done in his life: training, fighting, surviving, chasing peace and penance, he’d never allowed himself to hope for this. Never thought it was in the cards for him.

And then the universe gave him a Vegas-born card shark, and not only did he ante up, he was all in.

Instead, her hand rests on her waist, ring glinting against the night, still but strong, already a part of her.

Meant to be in a world where the only certainty is uncertainty.

(The illumination should be too dim for him to see everything in detail, but somehow the visual of her in his shirt, his ring on her finger, her in his home and his heart in her hands is still blinding.)

She turns from the window then, catching him staring, and she ducks her head a little as she blushes.  He sets the griddle on the stove and ignites the gas burner to begin the preheating, moving not to the fridge to get the rest of the supplies, but instead walking to her, taking her in his arms and kissing her soundly.

She goes up on her toes and wraps her arms around his neck, arching her back so their torsos touch, curling into him because he is not lost when they don’t know where one ends and the other begins; instead he is the most found, and he shivers a little bit when the coolness of the platinum band slides across the sensitive flesh just below his ear.

She smiles against his mouth, and he moves to rest his forehead against hers, eyes sliding shut. “Felicity…” he starts, but the words don’t come.

And as she does, she saves him from himself. “I know,” she says gently, softly, reverently, louder than he’s ever heard her before. “Me, too.”

She kisses him again and then takes his hand, leading him back to the stove. “I was promised sustenance,” she teases, pulling herself up until she’s sitting on the countertop, bare legs swinging and heels tapping lightly against the lower cabinets.

He nips at the soft spot on her collarbone, tongue peeking out to soothe it in the next instance, voice heavy when he says, “You’re going to need it.”

“Promises, promises,” she says, but he can hear the shiver in her voice, and he wonders how on earth he could’ve ever thought not being with her was the right course of action.

“You’re the brawn. I’m the brains,” she says, and it takes him a minute to realize he’d said that out loud.  “Stick with me, kid; I’ll teach you a thing or two.”

(She really is his other half, and the best part of him.)

He pulls the butter and sliced cheese from the fridge, knocking it closed with his elbow, and returns to the stove, making quick work of the necessary preparation before centering the sandwiches properly; his in the middle because he likes it crispy, hers on the edge because she doesn’t.

He comes to stand between her legs, and she smiles down at him. He reminds her of the angel Thea made in kindergarten, blonde-haired and clad in white, the one that stayed on top of the Queen family tree through several dozen rounds of Scotch tape repairs. But she’s not an angel; she’s not innocent or even the light to his dark. She is his equal, his understanding and his motivation; a fighter and a phoenix and one of the reasons he gets up every morning to try again.

She is his feet when he can’t walk anymore, the Heracles to his Atlas when the burden becomes too great.

She is belief as much as she is hope, and he is awestruck and grateful.

He reaches back to the Bose dock that had been her Hanukkah present to him, turning the music on low because he’s so used to her having sounds wafting around her when she cooks and it just feels wrong not to always do it, and plucks her off the counter when it registers what song the shuffle chose to fill the content silence.

They sway to Roberta Flack’s “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” as their grilled cheese sizzles, a track he’d downloaded on what would have been his parents’ anniversary, as it was their wedding song. She presses a kiss to the bare skin of his chest, just above his heart and just below his Bratva tattoo, the two halves of him that she’s helped make whole.

(She’d known Oliver Queen before she knew the Arrow, but he didn’t make sense to her until he was in that hood and in her car, and for all the visibility he’d had as both men, that was the first time anyone had truly seen  _him_.)

He kisses her forehead – a hello instead of a goodbye this time – when their sandwiches smell just about done, and he loads the plates she passes him, cutting his diagonally and hers into squares, and like everything, they do it by heart and together.

iii.

They disappear after their first dance,  _I felt your heart so close to mine_  still ringing in their ears, not lyrics but instead confirmation and truth, and the weight on their left hands unfamiliar but not unwelcome.

She gathers up her skirt, gently curling her fingers around the delicate lace overlay, and grins at him as he wraps his fingers around his and leads them away from the reception for some much needed quiet time.

They find the venue’s secondary kitchen just down the hall from the great room currently housing their festivities, and it’s blissfully quiet, save for the slight humming of the refrigerator, the only prying eyes coming from the porthole windows above the sink that overlook the snow-covered and white-lit early December evening. He pushes through the set of double doors and folds her in an embrace before the hinges even stop squeaking.

After a whirlwind day – though, to be fair, he saves the city and she helps save him on a daily basis, so maybe busy is relative – it’s everything to be able to stand still and just  _breathe_.

He wraps his arms around her so tightly that his hands can reach the skin exposed just below her lace cap sleeve, and she slides one hand across his waist and the other beneath his tuxedo jacket, delicate fingers sliding up and down his suspenders.  He presses kiss after kiss to her hair before pulling back just enough to rest his forehead against hers, hands gently cupping her face.

He takes a few deep breaths and he tries to get his mouth to work, but no words come out.

(He’s not alone, though; she’s just as speechless – and he finally understands, with every cell in his body, what Dig meant when he said caring about people gave him an edge, because the permanence isn’t a liability anymore. It’s the strongest he’s ever felt, actually, and it clangs in reverb as solidly and unwaveringly as the bar on the salmon ladder.

It helps that he knows –  _believes_  – she still hears him loud and clear.)

She turns her head and kisses the band on his ring finger, and he sighs deeply, contently, the same way she does when she rolls toward him in her sleep, hand always extending to double check that he’s still there – or to remind him that  _she_  is – before sighing and whispering “I love you” against the dark of the night, and sometimes, the life they lead.

(Because even when he didn’t realize it – or  _couldn’t_  – they were always a “they,” always a team, and always someone the other really cared about.

He used to think he’d derailed them, pushed them off their path, but maybe the wrong turns weren’t actually wrong, because from where he’s standing, he’s ended up exactly where he wanted to.)

The moment is broken by her stomach growling, and her disbelieving, boisterous laughter is the second best thing he’s heard all day, after “I do.”  He joins in, running a hand over the crown of her head before gently curling it around her neck and drawing her back to him for one more minute.

(He knows he’s guaranteed a lifetime with her, but he also knows just how much each minute matters, is acutely aware of how many times he’d let go when he should’ve held on, and he refuses to make the same mistakes again.)

He looks down at her when she glances up, resting her chin on his sternum, smiling at the soft, enamored look on her face. He kisses her gently, asking teasingly, “I told you schmoozing could wait until after dinner.”

“We’ve been married four hours and already you’re gloating. This does not bode well.”

He kisses her forehead and moves to the industrial freezer behind her. Yanking it open, he finds a gallon of ice cream and holds it up triumphantly.  “Care to join me, Mrs. Queen?”

She shakes her head in amused disbelief, but still reaches for the silverware tray on an adjacent table. Grabbing two spoons, she hands one to him and says, “It’d be my pleasure, Mr. Smoak.”

(That’s how Thea finds them some forty-five minutes later, Oliver’s sleeves rolled up and jacket not only off but laid on the stainless steel table beneath Felicity, lest her dress get dirty as she perches atop it. Her shoes are off, bright metallic blue polish on display, and the younger Queen doesn’t know what they’re talking about, and doesn’t much care; she’s too mesmerized by the look of absolute love on her new sister’s face, the unbridled happiness on her brother’s, and the fact that she has a family again.)

iv.

Oliver’s Hanukkah surprise for Felicity comes squealing through the door dressed in a grey BCBG mini despite being on a red-eye from Vegas into Starling the night before, and again, his eyes meet his wife’s over her mother’s shoulder.

(This time, though, he does what he should have then, and mouths, “I love you.”)

He goes to brew some coffee while Donna and Felicity talk a mile a minute, and when Donna excuses herself to the bathroom to go freshen up, he turns and gets an armful of blonde dynamo.

“You are just…” she murmurs against his pulse point, and he kisses her cheek.

“Anything for you,” he says. “Happy Hanukkah.”

And it is. The girls leave him to go out and gather supplies – food and oil to prepare latkes, some _sufganiyot_  and a small jar of furniture polish so they can clean Felicity’s menorah. 

He watches in silent reverence as they light the  _shamash_  and one other candle, voices mixing in a prayer that he doesn’t understand the words to but somehow knows all the same. For a moment, the only light in their house is coming from the glittering menorah – and in the hug Donna folds Felicity in before she extends an arm to Oliver to invite him into the fold as well.

The holidays have started to remind him that he inches ever closer to being someone who’s been without his parents longer than he was with them, and Donna has never pushed, never told him to call her “Mom” and hasn’t really asked about his own traditions growing up, somehow knowing it’s a sensitive subject even when he didn’t, but he finds himself overwhelmed at having a mother again; at having an extended family again, because the limited light in their kitchen is actually illuminating how much he’s gained instead of how much he’s lost.  From the other side of Donna, Felicity meets his eyes and reads him like a book, immediately starting to reach for him, but it’s Donna who gets there first, wrapping her arms around him and soothing him like only a mom can.

It’s still hard to believe that he is worthy of this kind of grace, that this is the life he’s managed to carve out for himself, the empty parts filled by the woman he loves and people who love him back, and light and hope and belief.

He nods his composure and thanks, and Donna squeezes his arm before going to one of the bags they’d lugged in earlier in the afternoon from their shopping trip. He wraps an arm around Felicity when she takes her mother’s spot next to him, and he holds tightly to her, even as his brow furrows in confusion when Donna holds up a small gift bag.

“Happy first night,” she says cheerfully, and he looks between her and her daughter. They have matching, knowing grins on their faces and he can’t help but return them.

“I figure I have about thirty Hanukkahs to make up for,” Donna says as he starts to move the tissue paper out of the way. He stops short at her words, glancing back up at her in surprise.

“But I’m not –“

“You’re part of this family,” Donna says firmly, motioning for him to keep going.

“We can’t start making the latkes until you open your present,” Felicity chimes in. “And I’m starving, so move it, Queen.”

He laughs as he pulls out his very first dreidel. It’s beautifully, intricately carved, and like the ornament Thea gave Felicity years ago, there’s a date inscribed on it from the Jewish calendar commemorating the experience.  He folds it in the palm of his hand, holding to it as tightly as he’s ever held to the daughter of the woman who gave it to him, and hugs them both. “Thank you.”

Donna beams and then claps her hands. “Let’s get latke-ing.”

They shoo him away from the preparations, but he stands against the wall and watches as they dice and grate potatoes and onions, Felicity unwrapping chocolate  _gelt_  as she waits for the oil to heat, both women continuing their own tradition and dancing as they cook.

He turns the dreidel over in his hand and just watches, a feeling of warmth spreading through his chest.  For all its complications, family can also be a simple thing sometimes; he’d forgotten it could be safe and familiar and comfortable – that it can be open and honest, and that he could be thankful for it.  Because he is, so much; they’d kept believing when he didn’t – kept the lamp burning for as long as it took for him to find his way home – and in the process, they’ve given him back something he’d not only thought he’d lost, but also something he didn’t think he’d ever find again.

After the first batch of latkes starts cooking, he remembers his own presents for the girls, and disappears into their home office to locate the boxes in which he’d hidden their gifts.

He hears Felicity call for him, and returns to the kitchen, two boxes in hand.  He hands them to Donna and Felicity simultaneously, and they rip the blue and silver paper open in tandem.

Donna gasps and Felicity looks up at him, eyes shining. “Did you make this?”

He nods, leaning down when Felicity pulls him toward her for a kiss, the silver star necklace with her initials engraved on it dangling from her fingers.

“It’s beautiful, Oliver, thank you,” Donna says, hugging him tightly.  She glances at her daughter teasingly. “And what did _you_  get the woman who birthed you after eighteen hours of terrible, terrible labor?”

Felicity flushes a little bit, ducking her head, and Oliver regards her questioningly. “Funny you should mention that,” she murmurs, taking a deep breath before lifting her eyes to both of them.  “I actually got you a joint present, but it won’t be here for a few months. Well, 32 weeks, to be exact.”

There is stunned silence in the kitchen, and then Donna breaks the sound barrier with her delighted screeches. She starts jumping up and down, and it doesn’t help Oliver’s sudden feeling that he’s on a Tilt-A-Whirl.

“Oliver?” Felicity asks, wrapping her fingers around his wrist. “Do you need to sit down?”

He shakes his head both in answer to her question and in an effort to get some sense flowing through his brain. “Are you sure?”

She nods, and tears trip down her cheeks. “We’re going to have a baby, Oliver.”

He reaches for and picks her up in one motion and half-twirls her around. He can’t make heads or tails of anything right now except his love for this woman and the family she not only gave him but that they’re creating together, and he just keeps murmuring, “I love you,” against her skin.

(“Best. Hanukkah. Ever,” Donna declares at the end of the week, and even with his limited experience, Oliver has to agree.)

v.

She heads to their living room at about half past six, dressed in thick grey wool socks and the STAR Labs sweatshirt she never returned. They’d set the timer on both the coffee pot and the Christmas tree the night before, and she’s thankful both are ready to go when she comes downstairs.

There are presents  _everywhere_  – her husband spoils not only their goddaughter but their daughter as well – and Felicity runs a hand over the pink bike with white the white wicker basket in front and a license plate bearing “Queen” on the back.

Shaking her head, she heads into the kitchen to make her one cup of coffee – she rubs her burgeoning stomach and mutters, “You better be worth me missing my lattes, kiddo.” She winces when the baby kicks  _hard_ , and chuckles, “I was  _kidding_.”

She hears the creak of the stairs and, knowing those footfalls anywhere, pulls out a second mug from the cabinet, filling it to the brim and putting it on the little ledge on the passthrough from the kitchen to their living room.

Oliver smiles his thanks when he arrives, leaning through the opening to give her a kiss. “Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas,” she replies, adding a bit of sugar to her mug and stirring. “She still sleeping?”

He nods alongside a disbelieving chuckle. “She’s five and we’re up before her on Christmas Day. There’s something wrong with that.”

Felicity motions to her stomach. “Talk to your youngest. She’s been up since one-thirty.”

“So she’s a  _she_  this week?” he asks with a grin.

Felicity grabs a granola bar – no way can she wait to eat until everyone else arrives for brunch around eleven – and walks to him, folding herself against him when he slides an arm around her shoulders and presses a kiss to the top of her head. The Christmas lights reflect off her necklace, new charms added with their wedding date and their daughter’s birth date, and she knows one’s waiting in Oliver’s workspace in the foundry to be similarly engraved when the newest addition arrives.  She takes a sip of coffee and stock of their house, lit colorfully and vibrantly – in celebration of all they’ve survived, all they’ve  _achieved_ , to get here.

She met him over a laptop and a lie, over blood and a bullet hole, but fell in love with him via comms and computers, Lian Yu and “I love you”s, and for all the scars they have, on their skin and on their souls, it’s the healing she sees when she looks at him, looks at the life they’ve built, and though he is not George Bailey and she’s not sure if angels get their wings every time a bell rings, she  _does_  know this is a wonderful life. 


	36. midas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s not nerves that fuels the tic, though. It’s not even that he’s just a kid on Christmas. Oh, don’t mistake; he’s a kid on ten Christmases, 24 Halloweens, 12 New Year’s parties and possibly one or two insane St. Patrick’s Days — but he’s also a scion from Starling, the boy who died on Lian Yu, the man who was forged from the fire in Hong Kong, the warrior who was molded into stone in Russia, the lost soul who was found and brought back home by the true hero walking next to him. and it’s that which propels him now, determination to live rather than just survive as his own father had told him to, because this will be the greatest adventure of his life.
> 
> It’s not fear; it’s anticipation. It’s like the clock turned back. It’s like the sun came out. 
> 
> It’s happiness, unsullied and uncomplicated, and somehow, somehow, it’s his.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, y'all, remember me? Totally okay if you don't; it's been a while. :D Just a few small updates as I try to get back in the swing of writing these two stupid faced stupid faces. (Though, as I strike up the band and toot my own horn, I did spend February doing [28 days of tag fic over on Tumblr](http://effie214.tumblr.com/post/102936591556), if you're interested in some short, pointless randomness.) At any rate, hope you're all well and that you enjoy these slightly longer -- but equally, joyfully pointless -- pieces.
> 
> Prompt from ohmypreciousgirl: first kiss, with a request for stay-at-home-dad verse.

She doesn’t sleep the night before, and when Oliver finds her the next morning in the no-longer-totally-under-construction nursery thanks to the sleepless night, she’s sliding books onto the little shelves he’d installed next to the rocker the previous weekend, and he can see the few baby clothes they’ve acquired — not to mention a bib or ten from Thea which proclaim “My Aunt’s The Best” — sticking out from the dresser drawer his wife hasn’t fully shut all the way. 

He leans against the doorjamb, one ankle crossed over the other and arms folded, watching as the sun illuminates its equally-hued counterpart of their child’s nursery. The beams filter through the delicate glass mobile of stars hanging above the baby’s crib, an early gift from Sara, and arc ribbons of color around the room, around this house that they’re making into a home, and maybe he’s a little sentimental, but if this is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, then he’s just put King Midas to shame.

She twists at the waist slightly from her perch on her knees on the opposite and grab the last stack of books, and it’s with that movement that she spots him in her peripheral vision. She turns fully, smiling a silent but bright good morning, a gesture he returns fully, wholly — because he is no longer shards or shattered dreams, and no longer the man for whom heavy is the crown — despite his concern about her lack of rest. 

She reads the worry in the slight quirk of his brow — subtle as it may be to anyone else, they always hear each other loud and clear — and her gesture softens into one outlined with just a twinge of embarrassment. “I think,” she finally says, slowly and softly, and he’s crossed the room before realizing his feet were even moving — you’d think he’d be used to this by now, making his way back to her side on instinct and inevitability — extending a hand and helping her gently to her feet, pulling her close when she winds her arms around his neck, “that this is what it must feel like to be a kid on Christmas.”

He smiles, bending to kiss her gently, and then, as he has done since she took the first test some 19 weeks ago, caresses her stomach, first with his palm and then with his mouth, whispering, “Good morning, little one.”

Her fingers card gently through his hair, tightening reflexively against his scalp when the baby kicks a reply to its father. 

He feels Felicity chuckle at the movement, and he begins to straighten as she says, “Somebody’s excited to have their picture taken.”

"Line forms behind me," he says, and she looks up at him with such unabashed love that it’s his turn to feel something deep in his gut. He’s had days where it felt like he’d died a thousand deaths, when nothing felt true anymore, but he’ll believe anything when she looks at him like that, like she knows he’s no longer living like he’s waiting to die but instead rising from the ashes reborn. He nuzzles her palm when her hand raises to cup his cheek, and he presses a kiss to her pulse point before sliding an arm around her and guiding her back to their bedroom to get ready for the day.

The next hour feels like it takes about a year to pass, and during breakfast he puts a hand on her knee as she bounces her leg impatiently against the underside of their kitchen table as she eats and scrolls through the background check on her latest potential hire, but finally they’re showered, dressed and headed to the ob/gyn’s office. He reaches over and threads his fingers between hers as they drive, and he keeps sight of the little smile curling up the corners of her mouth as she looks out the passenger side window, finding it difficult to tear his eyes from her.

(Ironic, considering he’d never seen her coming, and yet they’d ended up right where they were supposed to be.)

He takes a seat as Felicity signs in, chatting amiably with the office staff, and this time, it’s her hand on his knee to keep him still while they wait. 

(How they’re going to wade through the waiting of the next 20 weeks is beyond even her high intellect.)

They’re shown to an exam room first, where they take her vitals, and as they’re moved to an imaging suite, Felicity takes his hand gently, running her thumb over his fingers, which he hadn’t even noticed were moving. 

(It’s not nerves that fuels the tic, though. It’s not even that he’s just a kid on Christmas. Oh, don’t mistake; he’s a kid on ten Christmases, 24 Halloweens, 12 New Year’s parties and possibly one or two insane St. Patrick’s Days — but he’s also a scion from Starling, the boy who died on Lian Yu, the man who was forged from the fire in Hong Kong, the warrior who was molded into stone in Russia, the lost soul who was found and brought back home by the true hero walking next to him. and it’s that which propels him now, determination to  _live_  rather than just survive as his own father had told him to, because this will be the greatest adventure of his life.

It’s not fear; it’s anticipation. It’s like the clock turned back. It’s like the sun came out. 

It’s  _happiness,_  unsullied and uncomplicated, and somehow,  _somehow_ , it’s  _his._ ).

Felicity slides onto the exam table and he takes a seat in the chair adjacent to it, scooting it slightly against the linoleum to make sure he has a perfect view of the screen on which they’ll see their baby. 

He looks over at Felicity and she’s staring at the ultrasound machine. She turns her eyes on him when she feels him watching her, and an unabashed, giddy grin steals like a shooting star across her face. He in turn can’t control the disbelieving laugh that rumbles from his chest, and he leans over to rest his forehead against hers. 

"Holy shit," his wife says in awe after a minute as though this has just struck her, "we’re having a  _baby_.”

(It’s laughable. It’s absurd. It’s unbelievable. 

It’s impossible.

It’s perfect.)

They’re still chuckling when the ultrasound tech comes in, but all traces of mirth are exchanged for reverence as first conductive gel and then the wand is wiped over Felicity’s abdomen.

(He’s happy he’s sitting down when he hears their baby’s heartbeat again, because it’s a liturgy of sanctity sung even when he is such a sinner, and it brings him to his knees every time.)

The tech smiles warmly as she captures a few shots to print out for them to keep, and then asks, “Did you want to know if it’s a boy or a girl?”

They answer simultaneously. “Yes.”

"Well," the tech says after a moment, congratulations already in her voice, "it looks like Baby Queen is…a little girl."

Felicity gasps and he instinctively tightens her fingers with his, and he finds himself counting down from three — how things change and how they stay the same — swallowing hard at the image on the screen of their child.

Their  _daughter_.

He turns back to Felicity, still unseeing of anything other than the tangible proof of a future he’d thought so many times denied, and yet he’s never been more aware. This is not a death knell; the bells instead ring out echoing peals of victory. He finds her mouth with his, and though he can’t tell if the salt on his lips are from her tears or his own, it doesn’t matter as he kisses the mother of his daughter for the very first time.


	37. only then am i human (only then am i clean)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It takes 63 days, four hours, twelve minutes and one, two, three seconds -- counting back up from where she'd started them down -- before she says it back to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Found this one floating around in my drafts and after about 36 hours of insomnia and my beloved Percocet, decided to post it. This is **not** 3x09 canon compliant and based off [this](http://effie214.tumblr.com/post/106566538986) prompt.
> 
> Title from Hozier's "Take Me to Church."

It takes 63 days, four hours, twelve minutes and one, two, three seconds -- counting back up from where she'd started them down -- before she says it back to him. 

(Not because she doesn't; she  _does_. So very much. But where he has his scars on his skin, hers are in her soul; just as prominent, just as permanent, but also incredibly well-hidden.)

The fact of the matter is, Felicity Smoak lost her father at age five. Lost her first love fifteen years later. Lost so much more in between and after. The absences, the abandonment, the self-doubt and self-imposed guilt and declaration of fault; those losses dig at her, scraping and grunting like the boys do when they train on the mats, and sometimes drawing as much blood. 

She's so used to losing, playing against the house and their stacked deck, that it had overwhelmed her to find Oliver first in her back seat, and then firmly front and center in her life, tethered to her by battered heartstrings, ones she didn't think anyone would ever be able to play. Her heart in his hand stutters and scares her into silence; the wounds reopen, and despite what he had said on their ill-fated first date, she is reminded that she  _is_  a target, only  _he_  is the ricochet threat should she tell him to aim and fire.

(They've already spilled and stained so much, before and during and after their partnership, but she is afraid not that first cut be the deepest, but instead that she'd hemorrhage; there is nothing that scares her more than the idea of going there but being left behind in the end.)

He comes to her and  _stays_ , and even with her genius IQ, it takes her a little while to figure out that that's what he's doing, simply because she's got no experience with it. She has been on her own for so long that she expects the slamming of the screen door as someone leaves, shattering both house and home in their wake. She doesn't expect him to stand guard, locking the deadbolt to keep the world at bay and let her get some rest.

(If only there was a way to turn her heart into an open door just as safely.)

He is careful around her, but does not push for answers or action, keeping the safety on as he stands watch and protects her, tending to the injuries she had far before she met him, and letting her line up her bullseye, her endgame, in her own time. He steadfastly stands second in the duel she's pacing off, checking her blind spots and always at the ready. He's  _there_ , present in a way she doesn't think he's ever been before; the man who couldn't string an on-time arrival with the help of four separate alarms on his phone, two on her own -- not to mention all the reminder texts she'd send him -- is unwavering at her side, myopic in his mission to be her constant, her touchstone.

To be an always instead of a maybe.

(Home has always been missing something for her, and now, with him, it is something gained.)

The confirmation of just how  _here_  he is hits her one Saturday night, after he rises from her sofa after they finish their weekly movie and pizza break, gathering their plates and her wine glass so he can refill it. She glances around her apartment, surveying the scene; his leather jacket is tossed comfortably over a chair and his keys are resting on the counter next to hers. His shoes are by the front door, laces mixed with her own runners, and his phone is charging as it rests on the coffee table, plugged into a spare adapter she'd happened to have handy. There's an indent from his feet in her plush carpet -- a line traversing between just the two of them, out of the woods and into the breach, unknown but not alone -- and she hears him open her freezer door, knowing he's reaching for the pint of mint chocolate chip he'd brought the previous week. 

He's not making a marionette of her heart, dancing to a cadence he alone set; instead, the strings bow together, interweaving, and the stitches strengthen the patchwork far beyond what she'd thought possible. The rumble she feels as her walls start slowly to come down amidst the realization that she is indeed good enough-- he's where she's wanted to be all this time, and it feels like finally, they're meeting each other halfway and in their entirety.

She looks at him and sees all of him: she sees Oliver Queen, scion to one of Starling's most powerful, privileged families but whose life never glittered until it was gold; she also sees the Arrow, a fighter who blurred the lines so a vigilante to give people back what he himself will never be able to restore, and who changed to become the best man she'll ever know. She recognizes Felicity Smoak as a dedicated employee, partner and friend, someone who is  _not_  the Felicity Smoak who lost her father. She's not the same Felicity who lost Cooper. Instead, she's the Felicity who found Oliver, and as a result, found herself. 

Everything she's feared, all the trip wires and razor sharp reminders of a little girl whose father didn't care enough to stick around, who thought she'd caused the death of the only other man she'd loved, is shored up by Oliver's determined presence. 

He's keeping watch so she doesn't have to, and finally, she's not tired anymore.

She's laying down her armor, the self-protection, and finally, after years of differing cadences on differing paths, trusts him to help guide her home now. It's no longer dust to dust or ashes to ashes -- endings where there should be beginnings. Instead, they are north star and compass, bells and buoys; essential in their tandem, and she doesn't feel "complete"; she feels like she's  _more_ ; like  _they're_  more. 

They can do this without each other. 

They just don't want to. 

He's expected nothing of her; pulled back so she could come to him, and that's why she goes to him now and gives him everything.

He returns from the kitchen, spoons and pint in hand, and he settles back next to her, leaning over to reach for the remote that had fallen to the floor when he'd stood up.

"I love you," she says quietly, like it's the simplest thing in the world.

(She knows it's not. She knows it's going to be hard and messy and unfair at times, but she also knows it's going to be worth it.)

He stops dead in his movements, and she hears the cutting hitch in his breath as everything slows around them. 

(Luckily, everything also happens eventually, so she can take her time.)

He says her name quietly but still dangerous in how it hopes. "Felicity...?"

She takes a deep breath, swallows hard, and turns to face him, palms spread over his thighs. She knows he believes what he can feel, what has been proven to him, and in reaching for him tries to show that she's just as present as he is; that she's  _wanted_  to be, and that she's sorry it took her a little longer to catch up. And though she says it quietly, it is not without every fiber of belief and bravado she has in her; this is their truth, and she'll swear to it every time. "I love you." 

He searches her face for a long minute before he ventures forward, voice dropping and expression exactly that of their scene in an Italian restaurant, when she'd seen his vulnerability slide parallel to  _maybe I was wrong_. "Are you sure?"

She leans forward and presses her lips to his forehead before tilting her chin down and resting against him, eyes sliding shut as their fingers lace together. "It turns out I actually know  _three_  things: you are not alone. I believe in you. And," she wraps her fingers around his hand and tugs gently, forcing his gaze back to hers, eyes bright as they implore him to hear this hard-earned truth, the one she fought its consequences for so long and now the one she wants to define with him. "I love you."

He waits a beat, and then his hands are on her face, and he’s drawing her to him.

They simply breathe for a moment, foreheads resting together and his thumbs tracing over her cheekbones, and he looks at her as though he’s seeing her for the first time all over again – and maybe he is; maybe this is the end of the beginning interwoven amid a new start they both want – they both  _deserve._

Because they’ve been saving the city, and saving themselves just wasn’t as important somehow. But now that they are more answers than questions, she realizes they don’t need to be saved, not really; they just need each other.

He kisses her then, long and slow and deep, and she fists her hands in his shirt, keeping him close the way she didn't the last time they did this. It feels like the first time, though -- maybe even better; it feels like a reset,and the rain tapping against the window is absolution and congratulations all in one. 

(They don't hear much of it for longer, though, because the litany of  _I love you I love you I love you_  sparks lightly against the night and her bedroom walls, and when the sun rises the next morning, it shines just as brightly on the dawning of a brand new day.)


	38. hymn for the missing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> But for all the wishes she's made, for all the deals she's made and bargains she's proffered, the one thing she wants most is to forget the hope she'd had in her voice as she called out his name, which is why when she recognizes his profile, his name comes out as nothing more than a strangled whisper.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An alternate scene to 3x10, because of "they should have made out" reasons.

She sees the shadow shift in her car and stops short in her own darkened corner -- not that anything's felt bright all that much lately -- and with little motion and almost no noise, she slides her hand into her bag, pulling out the mace she'd promised the boys she'd carry and the small part of the bo stick Sara used to use that she's taken to carrying with her for reasons she can't go into without a few bottles of a nice Syrah as companions. 

There's something about the movement, though, that keeps drawing her near; she shouldn't feel the pull like a moth to a flame in the badly-lit parking structure of Palmer Industries -- she hadn't needed the Syrah's help to distinguish why it suddenly became easier for her to call it that -- and yet still she moves toward it, although more silently and warily than she has before.

(Even without the stealthiness of her steps, she'd still hear the clang of the foundry door as she threw it open, her heart beating hopefully against her chest and her feet on the steps as she ran for the one man who was always supposed to come home.

But for all the wishes she's made, for all the deals she's made and bargains she's proffered, the one thing she wants most is to forget the hope she'd had in her voice as she called out his name, which is why when she recognizes his profile, his name comes out as nothing more than a strangled whisper.)

She'd laugh at the awkward way he has to unfold himself out of the car, or blush at the way she stumbles backwards and how he catches her by the waist seemingly on instinct -- why, oh  _why_ , couldn't he have caught himself off that mountain three weeks ago, she wants to scream, and save her the pain of her heart shattering to pieces and scattering to parts unknown even when they were with him -- and then it's deja vu all over again, and he's uttering her name just like he did from the same backseat a hundred lifetimes ago.

It sounds like a hymn for the missing and thanksgiving for the found, and then she finds herself swinging her handbag into his arm in arcs of fury and disbelief and anger and fear and there are tears coming out of her eyes as she smacks him with all the force she has inside her -- and all the force that brought him back to her.

"That's for breaking into my car!"

"That's for falling off a damn  _cliff!_ "

"That's for leaving us!"

And then she drops her bag, and her fury and disbelief and anger and fear, because there will be time for explanations and forward movement outside of the momentum pushing them back together, and because she finally answers the one outstanding question she'd had since he'd gone: what would she do if she had him back again? 

She hauls herself to him and kisses him for all she's worth -- all  _they're_  worth.

"And that's for coming back."


	39. harm and boon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She says yes before she really hears what he’s asking of her, and because she’s her, she never really stops talking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Minor references and general speculation for 3x17 ("Suicidal Tendencies") and later episodes based on pictures released this week.
> 
> Title from the Balmorhea song of the same name.
> 
> Eternal thanks and gratitude to (and for) hope27 for her invaluable insight and support, and not just on this latest attempt to get myself back in the habit of writing for these two.

She says yes before she really hears what he’s asking of her, and because she’s her, she never really stops talking.

She says yes even when she realizes he is a question she may not be able to answer, even outside his quest; a mystery she may never be able to solve, and she says yes when she keeps trying anyway.

She says yes when the truths and the shadows collide in a backseat and a blood stain born of slicing pain; later she’ll think back to the first thing she said to Diggle and how right – and very, very wrong – she was, because Oliver is indeed heavy, but she thinks sometimes that she said yes because she knew even then he would never be a burden.

She says yes when he says she can trust him, when he says he’s right outside, when he says she’s not going to lose him.

She says yes when it changes from a provisional sign-on to “if you’re not leaving, I’m not leaving” to “how’d I do?” It even survives “there is no _this_ without him”, because in that she hears echoes of _“I had to find another way”_ and it assures her that together, somehow, they will rise.

She says yes when she stays on after Moira, after Slade, after Sara, because despite how each step down the foundry stairs breaks her a little bit more by reminding her of what they’ve lost – not to mention what _she’s_ lost in never having him, never having _them_ – she still manages to believe in both the Arrow and Oliver Queen, enough on the days when he doesn’t.

She says yes when she jumps out of a plane over Lian Yu and when she returns to terra firma to put Slade in prison and break Oliver out of his own; when revisiting his own brand of hell is the only way to help him escape it.

She says yes when she’s his internet researcher, when she’s his friend, when she’s his girl Wednesday, when she’s his EA, but most importantly, when she’s his partner, when she’s his girl, when she’s left in the mansion with a confused look and a maelstrom of feelings that just may sink her like The _Gambit_ did.

She says yes when he disappears that first summer and she just gets in her car and drives and ends up on a bluff overlooking the dilapidated Starling; she’s come here before when she’s needed to decompress or think or just needed _quiet_ , and she’s not this time, because she whispers “yes” into the wind when it asks if he’s coming back, because really, to her, he just doesn’t have a choice.

She says yes after he reassures her that there really _was_ no choice to make, and she breathes that in, because in that yes, she’s saying it’s enough for now.

She says yes when the world is tearing down so much around them that she only knows two things beyond doubt – beyond hope – and she says yes when those things remain true despite time and change and circumstance; they are her immovable objects in the unforeseen forces Oliver exerts on her life, and they push and pull and they ebb and flow, and she says yes every time she goes along with the tide even when she feels like she’s drowning.

She says yes when she drags him to IKEA and they spend two full hours trying out every possible piece of furniture for the foundry and she says yes when she catches the gleam in his eye when she pulls him to lie down next to her on the model they eventually settle on, because there is a part of her that knows that when he turns his head, it’s not the showroom’s overhead bulbs flickering life back into him, but instead it’s the life of waking up next to her in that very bed, and she says yes when the narrative in her head slides from   _enough for now_ to _say when, not if._

She says yes when she declares they need to not spend a fourth consecutive night in the foundry and sends Digg home to Lyla and walks Oliver first to her car, then Big Belly, then her spot high on the cliffs and they watch the sun sink below the horizon from atop the hood of her car and their hands brush together like a moth to a flame and she leans into the spark, not away, when she hooks her pinky around his and she says yes in the feeling of the unknown contentment that settles over them, that moment, and their city.

She says yes in an alley when he asks her to dinner and his face lights up in a smile that puts the beat within her heart, the one that finally feels full behind her chest, because it was the singularly incandescent moment of absolute truth where she’d thought, “oh, _there_ you are; I’ve been looking for you so hard I didn’t really understand that I’d already found you.”

She says yes when she comes to screaming his name out of ashes and dashed almosts, even though some part of her knows that while he’s just on the other side of the foundry, he’s also already gone.

She can’t bear to whisper yes into the wind again after they bury Sara, after she buries the dreams she’d let herself indulge in that they could – _would_ – get through this together, because it asks if this is the closest she’s ever been to being done, and uttering it like that just feels _wrong._

She says yes even when Oliver Queen makes her doubt, takes her back to that alley of yet more truths and still more shadows and this time the slicing pain is hers, and it not only cuts her skin and her spirit but reverberates somehow off the brick, scraping yet more wounds into a couple of battle weary warriors – and she says yes even when she’s angry about the fact that of all the times for him to come after her, of _course_ he chooses the one where it’s her turn to be gone.

She says yes even when she can’t bear to listen to his “you know how I feel about her” and his own two things, she still hears him, because that’s what they _do:_ they find each other, the flicker of light in the unending darkness, that spark that flared on her car hood months before – or maybe the first time he walked into her office, she never fully puzzles it out – they are the one good thing among the myriad of bad, and the one victory among the countless defeats.

She says yes when the shadowmaster brings her a sword and blood just like that in her backseat and steadfastly, stubbornly refuses to hear or listen or believe, because the universe, responsible for miraculous, complex things like super soldiers and meta-humans and lightning-fast men, can’t also be this infinitesimally simple and petty and cruel and take someone away from her like this again.

(She screams _no_ for the first time into the wind after she tells Ray the things she hasn’t been wanting to tell herself: that they have to stop, that _she_ has to stop, because it’s not what Oliver would have wanted, even though she shouldn’t _care_ what he wanted because he said she wouldn’t lose him and now she’s cold and alone, and it’s sitting on the bluff overlooking the city, the mission, that took the man who saved it, _braved_ it, that the past tense, not a sword, becomes the thing that cuts her down.

She says _no_ again the next night and the night after that, because accepting it and moving on are two very, very different things, but the wind – and her heart – just keep asking if she’s ready to move on.)

She says yes when he’s the first person in her life to come back, and she says yes when she hurries to him and the heart he took with him when he left and realizes that though he’s done more running in his life than she’ll ever truly understand, never mind all the things he says and thinks he cannot be, he still knows how to just catch her.

(She says yes even after he lets her go again, and she says yes when she comes back enough to reach for his hand even as he turns away, because she just can’t find a way to not be all in despite the fact that he doesn’t even realize they’re still anteing up. )

She says yes when she’s finally able to put words to what goes on in her head, when she tells him that despite his best efforts, he still is part of her happy story, and that this life they lead _has_ become normal to her – and it’s still all she wants.

She says yes when she puts Lyla’s bouquet next to Oliver’s fern, because something in her knows this represents a beginning, that what is broken right now still remains _theirs_ cannot be not all the future has in store for them. She says yes when she sees the representation that two halves of two lives can merge into one, and that no matter how shattered, one can pick up the pieces and put them back together with a little time and a lot of patience.

She says yes when they find that time, when her patience and perseverance pay off and he realizes that for all his running,  for all the delineations between Ollie and Oliver Queen and the Hood and the Arrow and the next head of the League of Assassins, the simple fact in their complex world is that he can’t be apart from her because she _is_ a part of him – the best parts, some days, just as he is for her.

She says yes when he realizes _partner_ is one word that encompasses all the things he cannot, does not know, how to say.

She says yes when he asks her to dinner again, only this time it’s at the loft and he cooks for her, and it’s marinara sauce from a jar and burnt garlic bread – because even when they win, they don’t, but they are still not at a loss, for their laughter just tinges merrily against both the smoke detector and the idea of normalcy and happy he’d wanted for her and ultimately, to both of their surprise, found embodied in himself – and a really nice bottle of red and they stay up talking about everything and nothing at the same time, and finally, the burning haze of _maybe tomorrow_ and _maybe it’s something_ clears into reconnecting and reconstructing.

She says yes when they have their first kiss a second time, when she’s the one to take his face in her hands and rocks up on her tiptoes to kiss him goodnight and he pulls her to him like she is everything he never knew he wanted but thought he could never have.

She says yes when she comes screaming his name out of ecstasy, out of _finally_ and _what took you so long when I was right here all the time?_ and the whole of her – mind, body and soul – looks up at him and realizes in a second incandescent moment that doesn’t ever really fade—that is more than a spark – that he’s finally made it home.

She says yes when he asks her the first time, sliding his arms around her waist as she rinses the dishes while Digg and Lyla put Sara to bed after one of their weekly family dinners, and he takes her left hand in his and threads their fingers together and she’s not sure if she shivers beneath his breath on her neck or the words he sighs into her skin.

She says yes in the back of an ambulance when one of the anchor arrows fails and they’re weaving through traffic and there’s just too much blood and this time she laces their hands together and steadfastly refuses to cry; refuses to hear the goodbye in his gaze and just shakes her head and replies with a look of her own that she just got him back and has no intention of letting him go, and this time he’s the one who says yes when she leans down and whispers in his ear, “Do you understand?”

She says yes on top of that hill overlooking Starling, not to the wind but to _him_ , and it’s hard to figure out which one’s brighter: his smile, the ring he slides on her left hand, or the stars twinkling their congratulations from above.

She says yes in a judge’s chambers because she simply can’t wait any longer to say yes out loud _to him_ , and he still hears it, even amid baby-turned-toddler Sara’s exuberant “yay”s that echo off the marble of the courthouse, and when they go back to the top of that hill, to the top of their world, he wraps his arms around her and laces their fingers together again, and she says yes one last time when he asks if she’s happy.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This work may NOT be cross posted/uploaded to any alternate sites (such as GoodReads or Ebooks-tree) without the express written permission of the author.


	40. upon my end shall i begin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end, he thinks, will come in darkness and screams and water – a storm he cannot escape. 
> 
> He doesn’t know the tempest will rage beyond Lian Yu, Hong Kong, Russia.
> 
> He also doesn’t know that it is after the end that everything truly begins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> amellthirst on Tumblr wanted some fluff after watching 3x21. She got this incomprehensible mess instead.
> 
> Set in the stay-at-home-dad 'verse established in "the joy in the mending," "midas" and "elsewhere" (plus a whole lot of tumblr tag fic.)
> 
> Title from Evanescence's "Whisper."

The end, he thinks, will come in darkness and screams and water – a storm he cannot escape.

He doesn’t know the tempest will rage beyond Lian Yu, Hong Kong, Russia.

He also doesn’t know that it is after the end that everything truly begins.

***

After the end comes when it takes them almost a year to get pregnant with her. 

He feels those days of negative tests and Tampax boxes as necessities a little more somehow than the ones he did overseas, and for as good as he had to get at schooling both his features and his expectations, the one thing Felicity _has_ given him – and in spades to boot – is hope, and he finds himself faltering beneath it now.

(He’s only ever wanted her to be happy, and has learned that she is when he gives all of himself to them, but that he can’t grant her this, one of the only things she’s ever asked of him, well, he’s not sure he’s ever failed so much in his life before.)

But where she starts to break, he always manages to just bend, strong against the disappointment and her tears, and he always kisses her and rests his forehead against hers – like they did when she left Nanda Parbat, when he had to go where she couldn’t follow, and she where he’d never known he’d wanted to go so much in his life – and breathes out the same promise she’d kissed against his lips then and a thousand times since: _we’ll find a way._

 _We’ll_ always _find a way._

They talk adoption, look at agencies, talk about whether they want to wait to adopt an infant or if they want to be matched with an older child. They have survived so much, both together and apart, and they’ll make it through this, too.

Even better, they’ll _live_.

So they relax and when she insists that she’ll go to the doctor first thing in the morning and he can leave her in Starling to go help Barry in Central City as planned, it’s because the stomach flu that’s been going around has finally made it to the executives’ floors and not for any other reason.

Until, of course, there _is_ a reason.

A very big reason.

(Not big _now,_ of course – or even when Charlotte finally arrives, some six days late but still just seven pounds of her – and, he’s sorry, but he’s fine with linear measurements, not food to establish reference points. He has a child in there, not an avocado, thanks very much.

 _Although_ , guacamole sounds pretty good, now that he thinks about it.

He’s _totally_ not in line at Chipotle twenty minutes later when he thinks, _yeah, we’ve been together_ way _too long._

Except it’ll _never_ be long enough.)

After the end comes on a rooftop as he and Barry surveil the suspected building in which a group of bank robbers have set up as renters to explain their presence on the street prior to attempting their largest score yet and she has Caitlin patch her through to Oliver’s comm, muting all the others.

He’s literally on a ledge when he hears her voice in his ear, though it doesn’t startle him – it’s as natural a place for her to be even when she’s not by his side, because she is always with him – but her shaky breath and inability to speak for a long moment has him gripping his bow, already nocked with an anchoring arrow, even harder as he scratches out familiar words against the night.  “Talk to me, Felicity.”

 “Oliver, I’m…we’re pregnant.”

She says it in a rush, like the gust of wind he’ll create when he leaps from the roof in a matter of seconds as the suspects start to move, and his stomach swoops and his blood rush deafens his ears just as they will when he jumps – except right now he’s stock still, gaping dumbly, jaw dropped and voice entirely gone after one of the shortest sentences she’s ever uttered in her life that just so happens to be one of the biggest things he’ll ever hear.

(Hey, he never claimed to be the brains behind the operation.

That’s all her.

It’s _all_ all her; the operation, his heart, his very being.

His beginning that actually has no end.)

“Are you…are you sure?”

Her laugh is just as disbelieving as his tone, and weighted in wonder. “Blood test at the doctor’s today seems to have been. As were the five home tests I just took to confirm.” He hears her swallow, and everything blurs in the best way when she whispers, “Congrats, Daddy.”

(He asks two things of Barry after that: to forget the ridiculously loud, unflinchingly ecstatic ”woohoo” he yells in celebration as they swing across the buildings when they finally make their move, and to use the super speed to get him back home within two minutes of them turning the members of the syndicate over to Joe and Eddie.

She’s the one who asks their friend not to laugh so loud at how they stand on either side of their threshold, just staring stupidly at each other before he remembers how to walk and reaches for and pulls her to him in one movement.

It’s unspoken but fully known that there never really was a chance either of them would ever consider letting go.)

***

After the end is him carefully holding her hair off her neck, starting in the first trimester as she rolls through tremendous morning sickness, and then in the kitchen of Digg and Lyla’s new home as their friends celebrate a housewarming party.

“July,” she mutters, standing in front of the freezer and fanning herself with the door and the cold. “Of _course_ you had to knock me up in the goddamn _summer_.”

(He shouldn’t love how pregnancy has brought out so much filthier language than he’s used to hearing from her.

Then again, he’d told himself time and again for _years_ the things he wasn’t supposed to love about Felicity Smoak, and look where that got him.

On a related note: he shouldn’t love how _right_ being wrong actually feels.)

“Well,” he hedges after a moment and a sympathetic kiss on the cheek, “if we’re able to do this again, we’ll time it better.”

She chuckles as she turns into him, resting her cheek on his collarbone. “We’ve never been very good at the timing thing.”

(He knows that; feels that as he has any of his wounds or scars, the ones made of both of skin and memories, and yet he thinks again back to the talk they’d had before he’d become Al Sah-him, about how he’d said every moment had led him to that place.

What he’d meant then was Nanda Parbat. Now he knows he’d actually been referring to her – to this life, the one where there actually _are_ sunshine days and starlit nights instead of storms; the new moments made in the shadows of the ones that had passed.)

Her nose brushes under his chin as she brings him back – for all the circles they’ve had to run in, somehow it was all still a straight line to get to her – and he has to swallow against the salvation for a moment before he replies. “It’s always good to have goals.”

She laughs more fully, but then straightens and faces him, tipping her head, countenance more serious and assessing. “That also goes for puppies-as-Hanukkah-or-Christmas-presents, too, if we can’t do this again,” she tells him. “No _way_ are you doing that.”

He puts a hand to his chest, both in mock wounding at the accusation and a trustworthy pledge. “I would never.”

She snorts. “Yes, you would.”

(Spoiler alert: he does.)

***

After the end gets him back to Starling, just like he’d wanted at the beginning; back to his old life of a fast car and a pretty girl (or two) coming home with him.

Only this time, the fast car isn’t going that fast – he applies the brake as he inches towards thirty-five miles an hour, because one of the girls in the car is his newborn, and it takes him forty-five minutes to make the ten-minute trip from the hospital to their house.

(He still nearly wrecks because he takes his eyes off the road to stare at his wife as she stares at their daughter as they sit together in the backseat

Thankfully, the drivers behind him don’t mind.

Mostly because those drivers are Digg, and Lyla in their minivan, Roy and Thea in his Camaro, Sara and Nyssa in a clichéd black cargo van and Captain Lance in a squad car.

They repeat the same caravan five years later when Charlotte goes to kindergarten, and if Felicity works out a rotating watch schedule for both canvassing and surveillance, nobody ever questions it, because after the end, friends and foes alike had all become family, and for as circuitous a route as it’s been at times, it’s also full circle.

Five years he was away.

And in five years with his family, he doesn’t just come home.

He makes one.)

Everyone stays at the house just long enough to see Charlotte settled in her nursery – they take rotations to watch her in her crib too, so really, when history repeats itself on her first day of school it’s tradition as much as it’s disbelief that so much has happened in so little time – but Oliver doesn’t leave the sunny yellow nursery for a few hours, simply nodding and kissing Felicity’s temple when she goes to take a much-needed and deserved shower.  Instead, he looks down at his little girl and wonders who she’ll become.

Will she have Felicity’s blue eyes and unflinchingly open heart? Will she have Thea’s nose and phoenix spirit? Will she have both Roy’s name and his desire to not only forge a new path but burn the expectations of the old one in the process?

Will she have Digg’s unwavering supportiveness; Lyla’s capacity to make the hard decisions without losing empathy or humanity?

Will she have the Lances’ determination? He wouldn’t even mind if Nyssa gave her something – perhaps her protective devotion to those whom she loves.

And what will she inherit of him?

He doesn’t know.

After the end, it doesn’t matter, because whoever she is, whatever she’ll be, she’s still the greatest thing he’s ever done.

***

After the end lands him in an interrogation room with a lawyer trying her damndest to sweet talk him out of yet _more_ trouble while he sits unrepentant and borderline cavalier about an accusation of assault and battery.

Laurel is all power suits and shaking heads and provoked irritation as she demands to know from counsel for a paparazzo what right the photographer had following the Queens and their infant daughter intrusively around in the first place, let alone after being told by Oliver to knock it off.

“Frankly,” she says, pretending to seem nonchalant as she rests a hip against the table at which Oliver and Felicity are seated, “if I was Mrs. Queen, I’d have decked him, too.“

(There was a time, he knows, when she thought she _would_ be Mrs. Queen. Now he looks at the one who actually _is_ , with bloodied knuckles and that warrior spirit that has not only changed over the years but _strengthened_ – and not just her, but him as well.

He is resolve when she is there; fortification against her surety as both a reminder and a promise. And they, together, are battle lines not only drawn but defended to the last stand.

The Ollie Laurel knew would have cut and run, a coward and a traitor.

The one she knows now, the one Felicity helped shape, knows his time isn’t about the days already gone.

It’s about the days yet to come.)

 _Their_ day ends when Laurel reminds the photographer and his attorney in no uncertain terms that there are laws about taking and profiting from unauthorized pictures of celebrities’ children – he tells Felicity later that he’d never been so happy to wield the notoriety of being a Queen; he nearly loses it when she rises on tiptoe to kiss him and whisper against his mouth that she’s always been proud of his last name, even more now that she wears it – and that it would be in both the photog’s and the publication’s best interest to chalk everything up to a life lesson and be on their merry ways.

After the two men agree, she opens the door to let the lawyer pass, but sticks her foot out as the photographer prepares to leave. “You ever bother these people or that little girl again,” she says in a lethal voice that would make her father and sister proud, “and a punch in the face will seem like a walk in the park when I’m done with you.” She raises her brows just slightly. “We clear?”

He swallows, nods, and follows his attorney hurriedly out the door. Felicity grins and claps before wincing and pulling her still-throbbing hand, further irritated by the movement, back toward her. “ _Shit,_ that hurts.”

(Did he mention she never really dropped the swearing thing post-pregnancy?

Update: he still loves it.)

He just chuckles and shakes his head when she looks at him. “I think we’ll go back to letting punching paparazzi be your thing.”

He stands, holding out her cardigan for her. “I mostly did it when drunk,” he replies, “so I didn’t really feel it at the time. Besides,” he says, sending a smile of gratitude toward Laurel, “I think we’ve got a pretty good enforcer here already.”

Laurel smiles and shakes her head gently. “All credit and inspiration to the mama bear here,” she says, picking up her briefcase.

Felicity tilts her head. “I do what I can.”

(She does it all, really; holds him together and makes him want to fly apart.

He’s good with either, because they’re good together.

Great, even.

The best.)

***

After the end, he actually comes to appreciate who he was – all the people he’s been, or is – because they help prepare him for life with Charlotte.

He appreciates the boy known as Ollie, who lived the late nights and the Peter Pan ways, that both exhaust and encouraged him to take joy from the seemingly simplest pleasures.

He appreciates the scared survivor who washed ashore on the island, the one who eventually became determined to see every new day as it dawned – who fought the tides as they rose around him, threatening to capsize him, but who never succumbed within them.

He appreciates the man molded in Hong Kong, who realized there was a world beyond his own, and that what he did _for it_ mattered even more than what he did _in_ it.

He appreciates the survivor hardened in Russia, who did what he could with the skills he had been given and who realized that sometimes family is found in the definitions least expected – and with that, new skills: to find peace in many of its quiet, questionable forms.

He appreciates the man who chose to come home, who has worked to put black in his ledger instead of red; who – with help, he knows, and more importantly, _admits_ – learns he can do and be and _love_ better than he’d ever thought possible.

(Who would’ve thought that after the end, it would have been him from the beginning?)

It’s why he floats the idea of staying home with Charlotte to Felicity over dinner on one of their date nights (also known as Thea demanding time with her niece and shooing them out of the house for a “girls’ night”; what sort of girls’ night she could have with a three-month-old, he’s forever unsure, but he learned a long time ago not to argue with the remaining Queen women), but Felicity’s margarita is halfway to her lips when he dunks a tortilla chip and mentions his idea all in a single move.

(Did he mention the guacamole thing stuck, too?)

Her eyebrows shoot skyward. “You serious?”

He nods; swallows as he tries to find the words, because for as relaxed as he’d wanted to seem, he knows Felicity is the saving grace and the safe haven, the port in the storm, and he can be honest here. He can let his guard down, because she dons just as much armor.

Protects him – _them_ ; all they’ve built – as he’d once so thoroughly protected his heart.

“I thought about coming home for a long time,” he begins, “and now that I’m here – now that we made it,” he reaches across the table and on instinct and perhaps the embodiment of a quiet promise, a whispered prayer five lifetimes ago, she threads her fingers with his, “I just don’t want to leave. Ever.”

Even in the dim light of the Mexican restaurant, he sees her swallow and take a shuddering breath. He squeezes her hand and breathes her name, finally asking, “What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking,” she says after a long moment and with a waver to her voice, “that our daughter is going to be the luckiest little girl in the world to get to spend all day, every day with you.” Then she leans forward with a wolfish grin and an inviting tone. “And I think dad!mode!Oliver is really fucking hot.”

(They stand on the threshold the following Monday, Charlotte in his arms and he in pajama pants and bare feet and wave as Felicity pulls out of the garage to head to work.

His days become filled with tummy time and diaper changes. Moments are made in discovering “SportsCenter” is far more entertaining to his daughter than Baby Einstein.

His days are defined now not by Ollie, or Oliver, or the Hood, or the Arrow, or Al Sah-him.

He’s just Charlie’s “da”.

And it’s everything.

He’s the one who’s there when she takes her first steps, the one who laughs disbelievingly when “Digg” is her first word, and the one who FaceTimes Felicity in so she can bear witness as well.

He’s the one who sits in the backseat with her for a terrified rushing to the hospital – that time, the drive takes six minutes instead of ten – the first time she spikes a dangerously high fever.

He’s the one who buys her that golden retriever puppy for Christmas, and the mint chocolate chip ice cream that soothes her first broken heart.

He’s the one who teaches her to ride her bike, to drive her car, to do her laundry before she goes off to college – Felicity’s the one who documents that one with her phone – and he’s the one she calls after her first date with the man she eventually marries.

His life revolves around her, not him in any way, shape or form.

He’s Charlie’s “da.”

And he wouldn’t have it any other way.)

***

The end, he finds out, comes in light and peace and safety – a tranquility eighty some-odd years in the making and holding his wife’s hand.

After the end, they began.

And in the end, they finished together.

fin

 


	41. personal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is still much work to be done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A prompt from awriterincowboyboots on tumblr: "So I was just watching this documentary on Netflix and I'm pretty sure it's ruined me for life."

He runs a hand through her hair as she curls up around him into an embrace he knows makes her feel safe. 

(It’s something they’ve done less and less as the months and the miles roll on, because they become more secure in them, their future, and he finds comfort in it as the necessity wanes.

Not that he’ll ever get over how much he needs her, and for a man who was going to live his life in solitary confinement, he now finally understands, to the ends of his weary bones, that the people he loves and who love him back are the only protection he needs.)

He presses a kiss and a question to her hair. “What did you watch?”

“The Imposter,” she murmurs against her Bratva tattoo. “It’s about a man who pretended to be various missing people, including some missing kids.” She shakes her head, the ends of her loose waves rubbing gently across his forearm as he holds her. “Who does that? Who calls a family, an organization like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and  _hurts_  them like that? Preying on their greatest hopes and their darkest fears?”

He doesn’t answer, because there isn’t one to give. He knows the evil of the world, has them tattooed on his skin, his soul and his heart, and he hates that those shadows and those ghosts and those rabbit holes still encroach on them even as they run.

She’s quiet for another long minute before she finally says softly, “There’s still so much work to do. So many other people to help.”

He’s pretty sure she feels his heart as it stutters in his chest. They haven’t talked about what happens when the road and the summer end; haven’t discussed going back to Starling and where this life, this road, they’re building brick by not-so-yellow brick, ends. He’d hoped it would come to a close not where the story ends, but instead on the first page of the happy story they’d write together. 

He curls his hand with hers as she sits up and spreads her palm over his chest. “I want to go back.”

His voice is rough but warm in its hopefulness. “Yeah?”

She nods, determination in her eyes and surety in her voice. “We can do this. And we can be us while we do. We can be both in order to do more.”

He kisses her then, because again he’s at a loss for words. He doesn’t deserve her; he knows that. 

He also knows that the world deserves  _her_ , and the two warring halves of himself finally lay down their arms when he does the same with her. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The documentary in question was particularly difficult for me to watch, as my old employer of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children was unknowingly complicit in some of these events. That job meant everything to me; the four years I spent trying to reunite families the most special of my life. The mission _still_ means everything to me, so I encourage you to go to www.missingkids.com, [ like them on Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/missingkids?fref=ts) or follow @ourmissingkids on Twitter to learn about children missing from, or believed to be in, your area, and help bring them home.


	42. rise (there's nothing else i'm needing now)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the seemingly mundane becomes motivation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A prompt from an anon on tumblr: "So, you really do that every day?"
> 
> Title from "Rise" by The Frames.

She looks at him over the top of her glasses, brow furrowing as she does so, and her answer coming out in the form of a question framed in disbelief. “Yes? Why wouldn’t I? She needs a bath.”

He looks to where she’s bathing Sara in her kitchen sink, the little girl enthusiastically clattering boats against the side, sloshing water absolutely _everywhere_  – soaking both Oliver and Felicity in the process – and reaching to gnaw on the faucet before Felicity rearranges her away from any potential hazards and distracting her with other bath toys.

She’s getting too big for sink baths – she’s getting too big in general – and for as much as they’ve gained being on the road together, he starts to feel like they missed some huge things: Sara’s first babbles, her starting to crawl, her walking with help and kicking a soccer ball with the Women’s World Cup on in the background. 

(They’d come back stronger than ever, but despite the foundation, he’d faltered in the cracks standing on the threshold of John and Lyla’s home, because at the heart of it, he feels like a coward. He doesn’t deserve the things he’s asking for – and he feels far too much like selfish pre-island Ollie in how much he wants them – because he’d tried to extricate himself from them without knowing how he carried a part of each of them within him – but still he asks, and in the uncertainty,he’d reached for Felicity’s hand, lacing their fingers before the door had open – before they’d stepped back into real life and tried to mend the bridges he’d burned. 

From the ashes, from this uncivil war, they had started to rise in the form of Lyla taking a deep breath and then taking him in her arms and whispering, “I forgive you.”

He’d only just barely caught himself from sagging into Lyla as the weight on his shoulders shattered, but later, back at Felicity’s apartment, and among the quiet and stale air of their restarted clock, he’d collapsed into her in relief and regret, and she’d just held him while he cried, the ashes scattering with his tears.

It feels like a rebirth, a renewal, and it’s one he will fight to be worthy of.)

For all the deep, dark maelstroms that have encompassed and defined his life, it’s seeing Felicity with Sara in water with bubbles and  _life_  that helps him to surface, to breathe again.

Still, the logistics of it all sort of baffle him. Felicity’s t-shirt is soaked through – normally something that would be a great development for him – and the towel she’d put down on the floor is just as saturated. Her normally tidy apartment has exploded with toddler paraphernalia; walkers and stacking toys and Tupperware – because ignoring all the toys and your godparents got you  in their travels in favor of a cheap storage container is a much better option. 

But in the chaos there is understanding; there is guidance, because this is what he wants more than anything. He wants to be the doting uncle, the one who changes her outfit three times a day when she drools through the fabric. He wants to be the one who rinses her off after every meal, because only about 80% of her food ends up in her mouth – the rest is on her face and somehow in the folds of baby fat under her skin. 

He doesn’t know how to do it.

Yet.

_Yet._

But he’ll learn. He always does. And he knows they’ll get there, that one day it’ll be his and Felicity’s child in the sink playing with wind-up swimming monkeys and then being wrapped up in a hooded towel adorned with shark fins; that it’ll be him who holds the baby against his chest until she falls asleep, reminding her – and himself – of the thing he finally knows to be true: that this is home.


	43. the ballad of bobby kielty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Felicity mourns with the rest of Red Sox Nation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A prompt from an anon on tumblr: "Uh, why the face?"

She throws her hands up. “They’re just so  _terrible_!”

He glances back at the NESN feed of the Red Sox game on the tv. They’re on Tybee Island, Georgia, in the middle of an oppressive heatwave that leaves the patio doors to their room open, curtains fluttering in the breeze, and her in one of his tank tops and faded grey MIT shorts that have seen better days – though not better than the ones they’re spending together. 

“I was  _there_ for 2007, okay? I was jumping up and down in the common room when Buchholtz threw his no-hitter. I  _believed_  when they went down 3-1 in the ALCS again – the 2004 comeback is Barney Stinson level  _legendary,_ okay, like talk to me about how it’s one of the greatest sports moments  _ever,_  sowe  _knew_ they could do it again – and I nearly hacked StubHub to get to Denver when it became clear they were going to sweep the Rockies. Hell, I remember the random kid who hit the game winning home run in Game 4! He was a  _pinch hitter,_  Oliver. And now look at them! They’re  _terrible_!”

He’s seen her flustered and frustrated – in a variety of situations by now – but the tint to her cheeks is adorable and he has to bite the inside of his own to stop himself from smiling. 

He loves hearing stories about Felicity Before – because honestly that’s how he’s starting to view the timeline of his own life, before and after he walked into that cubicle and saw her for the first time, right before she saw right through him – and he wants every little tidbit. For all the pieces he thought he’d given away, the parts of her that she shares with him shore up the cracks in his resolve; in his  _soul_. They’re puzzle pieces that just  _fit_ , which is odd, because he hadn’t really noticed anything was missing. 

(There are moments he wonders how he could’ve ever thought he could give up this life, to go down in a plane when she’d jumped out of one to find him at his most lost. For god’s sake, the formidable woman who bends before heights had flown halfway across the city in barely tested technology to catch him as he fell. 

He’ll tell her later that she was with him during the first fall just as she was in the second, and how everything reset the minute she set them back on terra firma; how he didn’t –  _couldn’t_  – take one more step without her by his side.

He’ll also tell her he has tickets to Fenway in August for Sox/Yanks, and he’ll buy both of them new Sox shirts and Fenway Franks and he’ll make her crack up with his enthusiastic  _so good! so good!_ when they sing “Sweet Caroline” during the seventh inning stretch, because it is. 

Oh, how good it is.)

She’s watching him from the corner of her eye until Pedroia leaps and makes an absolutely ridiculous catch, and then she repeats the second baseman’s move, leaping happily into his arms. 

And as she taught him to do, he catches her, laughing as she pops an ankle up in joy and smacks a loud kiss against his lips.

(He has to console her when they blow their lead and lose the game, but he’s rather proud of the fact of how quickly she can go from cursing angrily at her team to throwing desperate obscenities in the direction of his head between her legs.)


	44. come let me show you where life begins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is such a thing as a perfect day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt from the beautiful storiesbyladychi on tumblr: It was one of those lazy, roll around in bed with your gorgeous-vigilante boyfriend mornings that Felicity had come to savor.
> 
> Title from "Woman (Oh Mama)" by Joy Williams. (ps you all need to get this album asap because holy shitballs. And yes, she's that girl from The Civil Wars. But seriously. Get the album on Tuesday. Or [listen to it on NPR.](http://www.npr.org/2015/06/21/414700004/first-listen-joy-williams-venus) You can thank me later.)

Neither of them have known many halcyon days or sunshine moments with shadows from white picket fences, but this summer feels like it’s melting the perpetual winter that has been their existence both together and apart.

They  _burn_  as they give their days and nights to each other; as they give up their remaining secrets like the ocean gives up the waves.

(It takes him three tries to get on the sand; there are too many memories, too many ghosts in the reflection of the water, and she just holds his hand until he’s ready, and then when he takes that final first step – he’s getting oddly good at that these days – says very softly, “Look behind you, in the sand.”

He had, and he watched as their footprints fade away, and she’d curled into him, trying to hold him together at the moment he was going to fly apart, and whispered into his ear and imprinted on his soul, “We couldn’t go back if we tried.”

And they don’t.)

She watches in appreciation as he strides to the small kitchen in the bungalow they’ve rented on Hatteras for the week clad only in his boxers, his abs and her claim on his skin – on his  _heart_  – on delicious display. She hears him start the coffee maker and start prepping pancakes, which he’s surprisingly adept at cooking, and it feels like home. 

There is a calm about her as she lounges in bed, a warmth draping across her rivaled only by the breeze off the ocean, and she settles into it instead of against it. They’ve been running for so long – from themselves, from each other – and to come together like this, seemingly so easy and carefree…well, the centrifugal force still tries to bend her a little bit. 

(She kind of likes that it does, because they don’t do perfect. They do  _them_ ; they fight circumstance and each other. They are a conflagration, a force of nature, and they’ll either dance around the flames or rise from the ashes – it doesn’t matter, as long as they do it together.)

She slides out of bed and pulls on his black t-shirt from the day before, walking to where he’s standing at the counter and wraps her arms around him, burying her nose against his shoulder just as she had the night before they’d left Starling. He stops whisking the batter to cover her hands as they rest against his stomach, and she again notices how he rubs her fingers in the same way he used to when he itched for his bow and arrow. 

(It’s a reminder, but it’s also a lesson to be learned. It’s the past and a promise, because she knows he can be both Oliver and a hero – he has been, to her, this whole time. 

But like the advancing of the tide and their relationship, like the slow steps Oliver took back to that threshold, it has to happen in its own time.

She’s okay with that, because they  _have_  time, and she refuses to waste another second not being completely and utterly and  _stupidly_  in love with this man, because this is the peace, the happy ending, they never thought they’d find.)

She presses a kiss against the brand on his back, runs her fingers over the tattoo on his left shoulder, and then slides her hand to cover the Bratva tattoo, because she accepts everything he was, everything he is, everything he can and will be. She takes on his aches, his misfortunes, his mistakes – just as he does hers. 

More importantly, though, they create and share their victories – their forevers and their  _one day_ s. 

“I love you,” she murmurs into his skin and he turns and pulls her to him, and they just stand quietly on the dotted line, because there is no rush; there is only this, and only them, and this is what they were waiting for. 


	45. the living years

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which their wandering path seems to cross with those of various children.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is all hope27's fault. First she posted [this picture](http://hopedreamlovepray.tumblr.com/post/124634622284/from-sas-facebook-page) from Amell's Facebook page, then texted me about it, _then_ encouraged my resulting headcanon, all whilst being entirely adorable and a sweetheart and deserving of all the smiles and love and happiness, and this expanded fic is the result. I've honestly no idea what it is, but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless.
> 
> There is a minor spoiler warning for that _other_ picture we all saw on Monday, but it's a minuscule mention, really. Still, I like to cover my bases. :)
> 
> Title from the Mike and the Mechanics song of the same name.

She notices it first on the Santa Monica pier after an ocean breeze knocks off a little girl’s Dodgers hat and sends it somersaulting down the weathered planks. She watches him reach out for it just before it falls over the metal railings onto the sand beneath them, and after returning the smile he shoots her -- she will never be over him looking at her like that,  _ever_  (and for all the roses and thorns and their crowns, things that are beautiful from a distance but that bleed her dry in actuality,  _forever_  is not something she fears any longer) -- watches him not only jog after the owner, but after a grateful smile and nod from the child’s father while he tries to keep what look like the girl’s older brothers from stabbing each other with lightsabers, slide the hat back on the little girl’s head, taking special consideration of her fishtail braid, delicately sliding it through the opening at the back.

(The little girl looks up at him like he hung the sun currently spotlighting their day, and though Felicity knows that expression, understands how that look feels like it’s as much a part of her as her own blonde hair and the freckles he loves to kiss when she’s spent too much time in the sun, Felicity almost turns away from it because it’s too bright.

She’s glad she doesn’t, though, because the other thing she’ll never get over is how it feels every time he comes back to her.

And, _oh_ , the reasons she wants to give him to come back –  the reasons she wants to give him to stay – well, they’re as compelling as they are dangerous.

Just like him.)

They’re on a nature hike in Colorado when it happens again – because _sure_ , she loves hiking, who doesn’t love hiking (she doesn’t, she doesn’t love hiking, so much _not love_ happening here) – but  the lone moment of pleasure she has when she sees how wonderfully she’s fooling the outside world in how put together she looks in the picture one of the other tourists takes of them near the crest of what she’s sure is the Everest of the Rockies fades when there’s a crack of a branch and a cry from right behind them.

(She’s sure it says something bigger than all the words she has about and for him that she’s the one to go into a full-on fighting stance on instinct while Oliver still flinches defensively but doesn’t all but throw her behind him like he did the first time it stormed when they stayed on the coast.

She’s also sure they’ll find the balance of it all, the truth between the lines and the lives, because that’s what they do.

They’d told each other once that they wanted more out of her life than he could give her, but what they’re learning now is that the “more” they were both talking about is the one they’re building together, with every mile and every memory.

It’s hard, but so are they – especially because they know, above everything else, that it’s worth it.)

There’s a little boy clutching his ankle and an auburn-haired, shaking teenager a few feet away. Felicity takes care of the young woman, the little boy’s older sister, as Oliver looks at the child’s swelling foot. With a few reassuring words and one well-placed knuckle knock, he turns in his squatting position and the little boy clambers on Oliver's back, his tears turning to laughs as they make their way down the mountain, and it’s the altitude that makes her heart skip like that, not the sight of Oliver with a dark-haired little boy and a mischievous smile.

Yep. Totally the altitude.

It’s her turn on a lakeshore in Michigan when a six-year-old uses an old rope swing and misjudges the height of it over the water. They’ve been sitting on the pier adjacent to the tree the length is knotted on, toes just dangling in the water, but when she realizes the little one’s gone in and not come up and she’s closer than the parents, she all but rips off the t-shirt of his she stole in a 24-hour Laundromat in Kansas City that she uses as pjs and a swimsuit cover-up and is in the water before she even registers the shouts that follow her dive.

The little boy is stunned at first, then scared, but otherwise unhurt and they surface together, Felicity blindly pushing him toward the pier and Oliver’s strong arms.

(It’s her safe place; the only place she wants to be, now that she knows it, but she’s good renting it out for a minute or two.

Because now, two months into this and three very big words that make up for all the babbles she’s ever made, this is surety, and in that, there is sanctity.)

She hoists herself back up onto the dock and brushes her soaked hair away from where it’s matted itself to her cheek and then gets an armful of grateful mom.

(He presses a kiss to her forehead then, and repeats himself that night, and when his arms are again hers for the taking, she brushes aside his murmured admiration and jokes, “Can’t have you being the hero all the time in this relationship.”

She squeaks a little bit in protest and surprise when he rolls slightly away from her, but says nothing when he looks down at her with as intense a stare as he’s ever given. “Felicity,” he says very seriously, “you’ve _always_ been a hero.”

After that, well, she can’t help but lose herself in something other than the lake; namely, him.)

It’s in the Outer Banks – maybe because they’re running out of road, or maybe because it’s both sunk in that they’re never going to run anywhere that doesn’t lead right back here, to the living years instead of the dying kind – that they finally put words to the things she’s noticed, the feelings she’s had, the things that beat within her heart and breathe within her love for him. They have the return-to-Starling talk, the engagement talk, the-oh-my-god-my-mom-and-your-sister-together-could-be-downright- _terrifying_ talk and finally the kid talk, and for all the things she’s learned, she takes his hand across a candlelit seafood restaurant and she lets herself look at him like he is the greatest and best thing she’ll ever know.

(“One of each,” she says later that night after they “practice trying”, firm and unyielding – because _hello_ , she’s the heliocarrier in this _Avengers_ metaphor, so she’s in charge of when and how that thing is going to be hauled out of the water, thanks very much – and after he shakes his head and says, “A litter of little girls, each as beautiful as their mama” she smacks his arm as it bends around her and says, “Don’t call our daughters a ‘litter’” and the way everything just _stops_ at the word “daughters,” well. it might just be the most beautiful moment of her life.)

He surprises her with Yankees/Red Sox tickets at Fenway in September and she knows she’s going to love him for the rest of her life when they actually catch a Papi homerun from their seats over the Monster and he hands it to the family next to them and she doesn't mind, and when they do return to Starling, they eventually buy a little yellow bungalow in a neighborhood with sidewalks and streetlights and kids running around from morning till night, he goes for his runs in the canyons around the house and she waits on their front step with coffee or wine, depending on the time of day.

(He’s the one waiting on Halloween to greet the Batmans and the princesses and the scary masked ghoulies and just laughs when she tells him to ease up on "testing" the mini-sized Three Musketeers bars and then groans in subservient acknowledgment when she hands him two Dramamine three hours later, but she still can’t hide her smile, because for as much as he’s an idiot, he’s _her_ idiot, and she can’t think of having it any other way.)

It’s why she’s not nervous on the Tuesday night she meets him on their front porch with neither coffee nor wine, because as she watches him run down the street in a green hoodie Roy sends him from PO Box God Knows Where, stopping to rescue a basketball from the back of a hoop and playfully amuse the six-month-old in a stroller on a walk with her newly-adopted parents, she understands that what she’s going to tell him, the evidence she’s got lined up on their bathroom counter,  is the culmination of those moments in California and Colorado and Carolina, and they all add up to the only unyielding truth that matters: that he is the end; he is the all; he is _home._


	46. the long way around

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How do you begin again when you've already set off?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From a meme request from an anon on tumblr. Prompt: "I'll share blankets with you."

She may be an MIT grad and have an IQ unsurpassed by a great percentage of the world, but this may well go down in the annals of history as one of the worst ideas she’s ever had.

The sentiment behind it isn’t faulty; their road out of Starling has taken many a detour, traversed many a curve, and as thankful as she is that it’s led them here, it’s still unfamiliar and uncharted. There are still things they need to figure out; decisions to be made and maps to be marked.

But how to begin again when you’ve already set off?

They’d fallen into each other in Nanda Parbat, managed to pull themselves upright and side-by-side in Starling, but now that it’s just them, she thinks they’re stumbling just a little bit – oh, they’ll catch each other in the end, but where they’ve been staring down the barrel of the gun, there’s a part of her that wonders if they’re not waiting on a starter pistol.

They can be each other’s partners, the vigilante and the IT girl, but being just Oliver and Felicity? That transition, that truth; well, it takes time.

Which is why she suggests on their first morning of their roadtrip that they climb one of the cliffs they’d passed in the Porsche on the way into town to see the sunrise.

She’s sick of the weighted midnight hours that linger; she wants sunshine and smiles and spaces as wide open as her heart, as encompassing as her love for him.

Not only does she want to step out of the dark and into the light; she’s _ready_ to bid goodbye to the night and hello to the dawning of a brand new day.

The sentiment might be flawless; her idea to hike said cliff is a fool’s errand. She is not a hiker. She’s barely a jogger. Hell, at three-thirty in the morning when he eases her gently awake so they can take their time making the climb – the height of which, she realizes as they stand at the base, must rival that of Everest.

Yeah. She’s an idiot.

Still, she returns his soft smile when he reaches over and takes her hands, rubbing them between his palms to warm her up. It may be May, but they’re near the water – and oh, yeah, it’s also the _middle of the night_ – so she sees as well as hears his chuckle when she can’t quite curb a yawn, and the light in his eyes warms her just as much as his touch does.

But there’s something to his voice when he says, “We can always go back to the hotel,” and she tilts her head as she studies him in the pale moonlight.

When it hits her – great Google gods above, she _really is an idiot._

“Oliver, I –“ It’s the same tone she used when she found him in her backseat a lifetime and a hundred last chances ago, and she finds herself stepping forward to wrap her arms around his waist beneath his coat. Resting her chin on his chest and tilting her head back so she can look him in the eyes, she says quietly, apologetically, “I didn’t even think.”

He shakes his head, brushing a loose tendril of hair behind her ear. “The height doesn’t bother me,” he says, tone equally soft. “Just the fall.”

It’s in that moment that she knows come yet more hell like the island he’d survived or high water like the dam she saved him from, whether it’s by sunrise or sunset, they’ll make it to the top because they need to conquer this. Of all the things they’ve survived, they need to overcome and rise above this – and they have to do it together, because all the faltering, all the fumbles, happened when they were the furthest away from each other.

They will do this together, because they _are_ together, and this is one final demon to be exorcised.

He laces his fingers with hers and they start slowly up the trail. It takes them an hour or so to reach the plateau overlooking the valley that surrounds them and the shoreline the sunrise will be highlighting soon, and she’s a little out of breath and her face feels wind-burned, but she sees Oliver breathe deeply, watches how his shoulders drop in relief and success, and she knows in that instant it – the hike, the masks, the mission, their pasts – have been worth it and are now a closed book.

He spreads a plaid blanket out on the dewy grass – where he got it, she’s not entirely sure; she’s not complaining, though – and then tugs lightly on their still connected hands to pull her to him. She sits with her back against his chest and he bends his knees to keep her snugly between his thighs and then wraps his arms around her. She hums contentedly and rests her head against his shoulder, turning her face to press a kiss to the underside of his jaw. He pulls another blanket from the small bag she’s just registering he has with him and wraps it around her as well. He reaches one final time and produces a thermos full of coffee, laughing outright when she gasps happily and sits up enough to press a full kiss to his cheek. “My hero.”

Because he is. Just as she’s his. They’ve saved each other just as much as they’ve saved themselves; worked to be the best they can be and to keep going. And as the sun peeks over the horizon and marks the dawning of a new day, it’s also the start of their new life, their _best_ life, and starting over never felt so right.


	47. the heart and the home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five times Oliver cooks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a gift for aubvi over on Tumblr, part of the Olicity Secret Santa exchange.
> 
> And though it's been said, many times, many ways, and probably more on time, I sinceriously hope you all had wonderful holidays with your loved ones, and that you have a blessed and happy new year. Thank you for all your love and support during 2015; you all helped make many of the ups in an admittedly down year. May 2016 be the best one yet for all of us.

i.

She stirs before dawn in a king bed in Big Sur, but the the thing that catches her most off-guard amid the unfamiliarity is that she wakes on Oliver’s chest, his skin warm against hers and his fingers gently in her hair.

“What time is it?” she manages – barely – and he presses a kiss to her forehead, mimicking the smile that comes to her lips when his mouth caresses her brow.

“Early,” is all he says, voice as lulling and welcoming as the sound of the waves outside. “Go back to sleep.”

She snuggles back down against him, kissing the heart he’s kept longer than either of them have truly known, but as she disappears back into the soft vestiges of sleep, she just somehow _knows_ he’s restless, the slightest bit anxious, even as he sits quietly above her.

She knows it’s not that he wants to run – God knows they’ve both done enough of that to last the lifetime part of her is already secretly hoping they’ll spend together, even if they’re less than two days into it; like her mother says, “when you know, you know” – but she knows he’s not yet used to staying in one place.

She finds she’s okay with that – she’s forgiven a lot of things already, and knows she’ll forgive even more – because this time she knows, to her very bones, that he’ll come back this time.

She loves him, yes, but above all, she trusts him, and it’s why she opens one eye to peer up at him. “If you want to go for a run, all I request is coffee when you get back.”

His ministrations in her hair falter a moment. “It’s okay,” he finally says, but there’s something she can’t quite identify lacing his voice. She gets the gist, though, just as she’ll get the specifics as they meander their way wherever they may go this summer – for even as they roam, they are finally home, because they at last have each other – and she presses her lips against his torso once more.

“Really, Oliver. I don’t mind.”

He’s still and quiet for a minute, and then squeezes her against him and presses a kiss to the crown of her head before sliding out from beneath her. She doesn’t turn on her side like she’d probably do if she was trying to settle in while alone in her own bed; instead she tucks her hand under his pillow as she rearranges her own, and she’s just falling back to sleep when he brushes his lips one last time against her forehead. “I’ll be back soon.”

When she wakes again, the sun is up and her senses are assailed by wonderful smells.

It smells like the Saturdays when her mom didn’t have to pull a double at the casino, when they had enough money left over for things other than the bare essentials.

It smells like sunshine and yesterdays.

It smells like home.

It looks like it, too, when she leaves the bed, tugging Oliver’s shirt from the previous night over her head before rounding the corner in bare feet to see him at the small stove in the kitchenette of their hotel room, a box of pancake mix and a carton of eggs on the counter in front of him and a spatula in each hand as he mans two skillets.

So much about this man has stopped her in her tracks before – or, perhaps, intrigued her enough to follow him to the ends of the earth first in words and then in deed – but this time it’s the pure _peace_ she sees in him that pulls her up short. There’s no trace of her edgy bedmate from mere hours ago; instead, he’s just here, and it’s like he realizes it’s enough.

It’s just breakfast, but with Oliver, it’s never _just_ anything; this time it’s tomorrows and time spent making up for lost time, for new beginnings and forging ahead with only a map and their heart and hands with each other, and the profundity of it all has her blinking away a few tears before she goes to him.

Because even with this life they lead, of uncertainty and masks and truths being understood from lies, he is the one thing she knows for sure.

“Hi,” she murmurs so as not to startle him, and he turns, an infectious grin instantly lighting up his face.

“Good morning,” he replies, leaning down to kiss her gently. “Coffee’s in the pot.”

“Atta boy,” she teases, a thrill running up and down her spine at the amused almost crinkle-face he gives her in return – _more of that, please,_ she thinks, and it has nothing to do with the coffee – and as she pours herself a cup and refills his as it sits to the right of the stove, she asks, “So what’s all this?”

“Breakfast,” he says simply – like it should be, like they’re normal. They’re not, but she likes the deviation anyway; they’ve always been best as outliers, two things holding on against the night and the odds. “Or, it’s trying to be. I don’t think the eggs are working quite the way they’re supposed to.”

“Don’t look at me,” she warns around the smile that’s threatening to become a permagrin. “I’m pretty much useless in this scenario.”

He lets his eyes trail openly up and down her figure. “Well, I wouldn’t say _that_.”

She laughs even as she raises an eyebrow. “I require sustenance first, mister. But later…”

“Yes, good. Later is good.” He leans over and kisses her again, longer and deeper, and they’re only a couple hundred miles out of Starling, they’re a world away and on the precipice of something that is threatening to become absolutely, unequivocally, undeniably _everything,_ and for someone who’s followed him into the dark unknown time and again, she’s so ready to fall into this future.  

 

ii.

The first few weeks on the road, he still finds it difficult to sleep. Not because of the nightmares that plague him, the ghosts that roam the halls and his memory, but because there’s a part of him that worries if he does, he might wake up and everything will have been a dream.

Not that this roadtrip has been a fantasy – parts of it have, for sure (and not just the parts including Felicity on top of him, hair loose and tumbling down her back as she moves above him, half heaven sent and half original sin) – but it’s been the most truthful, open journey he’s ever been on. They’ve talked, about their pasts apart and imperfect and their future, pending and warmly hazy; they’ve argued over Malcolm Merlyn and Nyssa.

Those were the nights he doesn’t sleep, perchance to dream, because if he wakes back up in Nanda Parbat, an inch away from giving away the last vestiges of his soul, if he has to walk away from her in chains that he may not have put on her wrists but are of his own making, if he’s going down in another mode of transport with screaming and fear on his tongue…if this isn’t real, there’s a part of him that thinks that for all he’s survived, he might not come back from that.

The amazing thing is, when his body finally gives into the exhaustion, he dreams not about the things that have cut him, threatened to bleed him dry; instead he sees the things he dared not admit dreaming before having Felicity in his arms and in the passenger seat next to him – the things that slipped away in sleep but that are corporeal and defining in this new chapter of his life.

The first night in the house in Ivy Town is the first time he has a sleepless night in months, and he doesn’t mind a bit.

There are boxes everywhere, and half their furniture somehow got delivered to Cincinnati, and for all the times he’s said it this summer, this is truly the time he thinks he can’t be any happier. Felicity is passed out in the bed next to him, exhausted from long days of delayed travel through Heathrow on their way back to the States from Europe, but he’s too energized by the sounds of a silent house to stay unconscious for long. Perhaps because he’s been alarmingly aware for so many years out of a need to survive. Now, though, he’s got a need to _live_ – the life he chooses, the one he and Felicity are going to make for themselves in this house.

In this _home,_ the one where she has his heart and he sees a forever.

He gives up the ghost – one of the last, he thinks, and smiles at the fact that the optimism that warms him in the somewhat chilly house (because Felicity has a thing about air conditioning) doesn’t feel that odd anymore – around quarter to five and after a kiss to her head and a grin at her sleepy snuffling, he climbs out of bed and quietly heads out of their bedroom and to the living room on the first floor.

There’s a ledge that for once in their lives is decorative, that he wants to line with pictures of their travels, their friends, their family, and he’s glad the landlords haven’t fixed the squeaky step on the stairs even as he winces as the sound pierces the early morning, and he heads into the kitchen, running a hand over the marble on the island and adjacent countertop.

He smiles as he takes in the kitchen, visions of Raisa making dinner for the family but sneaking him and Thea a cookie before mealtime filling his head. A stray memory of Tommy follows, of burnt grilled cheeses in dorm kitchens after a too-long weekend of partying. But it’s the reminiscence of making pancakes for Felicity – that had eventually gotten cold when he couldn’t keep his hands to himself, not that she had minded – that has him reaching for her tablet – because of _course_ the wifi network in the house is already up and running.

He googles “cooking for dummies” and settles on the couch, determination in his being and sweet nostalgia in his mind. His cooking attempt had been at the beginning of their trip, back when he thought he knew it all when in fact he had no idea – he hopes she never stops teaching him everything he didn’t know he needed to know – and though there’s no way in any of the hells he’s known that he’ll be an Emeril, or whatever Food Network chef is popular at the time (he’s pretty sure he’s never actually _watched_ the Food Network), there had still been something fulfilling in stopping on his jog to enter the small corner store not far from their hotel to pick up supplies to make breakfast. It had been the first decision in a long time that he’d made solely because he _wanted_ to rather than needing to, and just like Felicity’s mouth and skin and existence, he’d slowly become addicted.

Their travels hadn’t allowed him much opportunity to try again – though he hadn’t minded, because strolling near the Bridge of Sighs in Venice with the taste of pasta and wine on his lips from Felicity’s kiss, or gorging themselves nearly sick on treats from a patisserie in Paris are something that he’d miss even if they’d never happened – but as he is with everything with her – as a little voice in his head tells him he’ll have to be with everything eventually – he’s ready to give it all another go.

He knows something like pasta would be fairly simple, but this will be the first meal in their new house, the first entry in this new chapter of their lives together, and though he long ago learned not to expect anything remotely close to perfect, he still wants it to be special. He pages through recipe after recipe, and after opening another tab to google how to prepare some ingredients – because one of the things he’s learned over their wandering summer is that baby steps are still steps in the right direction – he comes across a recipe for Chicken Tikka that looks relatively easy, and even better, similar to one of the dishes they’d enjoyed in Asia. He searches for a piece of paper, not wholly unsurprised when he doesn’t find one, and he heads back upstairs to grab his phone to make a reminder for the ingredients and a notebook, because he can just _hear_ Felicity fussing at him for scrolling on his screen with dirty or greasy hands.

He glances over to where she still sleeps, and though there will always be a part of him that feels like he doesn’t deserve it, he’s thankful that she’s so much more than the voice in his ear – or even his head. It’s bigger than that; _they’re_ bigger than that, as big as they want to make them, and the one thing all this travel has told him is that he’s finally ready for this, finally ready to truly and unhesitatingly come home.

That night, he not only makes his girlfriend dinner, but he meets the neighbors, who are kind enough to help him not burn the chicken on the barbecue on the patio, and he’s thrilled when Felicity is as touched and pleased as Laura Hoffman seems to be at the fact that not only is dinner made and edible, but it’s actually _good._

He can’t quite find the words to thank her, not just for the enthusiasm over what amounts to chicken, vegetables and rice, but he knows she knows by the way he comes up behind her as she insists on doing the dishes and wraps his arms around her that none of this – dinner, this house, his heart – would be here if it wasn’t for her.

 

iii.

The loft is quiet, but this is one of the times he revels in it, because he knows it won’t be for much longer.

(He also revels in it because he remembers; remembers the silence, how he’d had to brace himself for the fact that it still smelled like her weeks after she’d last been there.)

He sets his bags on the counter, shrugging off his jacket and undoing his tie, draping them both over one of the stools at the breakfast bar before walking over to the Christmas tree to turn the lights on.  He heads back to the kitchen, centering the glittering silver menorah as it rests on the sidebar.

He rolls up his sleeves and turns on the water in the sink, smiling softly to himself as he begins to peel the first of a sack of potatoes. He doesn’t mind the monotonous work, not just because he understands better than most now just how worth it it’ll be, but because those memories, as his are wont to do, still follow him around. He still feels the weight of exhaustion in his bones, the dance he’d done for weeks of hospital to home and back again making every step a journey, where he hadn’t dared close his eyes, tired body and mind and soul be damned; still feels the heat of the tendril of hope in his step the day Felicity had opened her eyes; still feels the sting of the tears that he hadn’t and wouldn’t ever regret shedding when she’d squeezed his hand and when he’d pulled her knuckles to his lips to murmur “I love you” like he’d been so terrified he’d never be able to again.

He still doesn’t begrudge himself the way he’d fallen into Donna’s arms like he had the night they’d been left waiting at swinging doors and running medical personnel as the most important person in both their lives was rushed into emergency surgery, or the way relief had weighed his bones just as much as the terror, and it burns in an entirely different way, but for her, like so much else, he’d sworn he’d get used to it.

But that was last December, twelve months ago, and as much as the days have been both long and short and he still feels it all, it’s time to move forward. It’s time to begin again, to breathe again, to come home again – because she is, different and changed as they both may be by everything that’s happened. It’s why she’s at the airport picking her mom up so Donna can spend the holidays with them – it’s why she’s doing so in her Mini, because she won’t have to be in the back of a town car ever again, by mutual decree. It’s why he’s here with a little surprise for both girls; for memories of warmth and hearth and home for Felicity and a thank-you to Donna, who had kept him sane last year while his lifeline was fighting for _her_ life, regaling him with stories of a young Felicity and her beloved bubbe, of the goth girl who hated coming back to Vegas but loved spending Chanukah with her family, of Donna’s admiration for the woman her baby girl has grown into.

He’s only got a few potatoes left when he hears voices approaching the front door, and he wipes his hands on a dish towel just as he hears the scrape of a key in the lock and two blonde dynamos’ clicking heels crossing the threshold.

“There’s my favorite future son-in-law!” Donna chirps happily, opening her arms. Oliver embraces her gently but strongly, and smiles when he feels the light press of her lips against his cheek. “How are you doing, hon?” she asks quietly, and for all her flash and feistiness, this is the Donna he knows best now, the protective mother, the concerned friend.

“Glad you’re here,” he replies just as softly, another truth passed between them, before she steps back just enough to glance pointedly to where Felicity stands just over her shoulder. He nods minutely before moving aside to drop a kiss on Felicity’s lips even as he registers how gingerly she’s moving, given the light rain falling in Starling. “How are _you_?”

“Ready for the two of you to stop worrying about me,” she says with a grin and a wink before her brow furrows as she sees the pile of peeled potatoes on the countertop. “What’s all this?”

“What’s it look like, Miss MIT?” he teases, easily capturing the hand that she raises to swat halfheartedly at him, curling her fingers gently to rest against his heart, his thumb running over the diamond solitaire that still rests on her finger. It grounds him still, centers him when he feels most adrift, and the way she stays still threatens to bring him to his knees all this time later. Maybe it’s because she almost didn’t, almost couldn’t. But as he was there at the end of the physical therapy walkway – as he’ll be there at the end of her aisle, and their life together in five or so decades – she’s here now, still steel and strength, unwavering as he flounders, and she pulls herself around him, making him smile and _breathe_ when he can kiss the top of her head.

They’ve made it, from the top of the world to the bottom of the river; the long way around versus a straight line leading to each other. And though they’ve had their detours, their bumps in the road, they still manage to end up at each other’s side; where he used to worry about protecting her, about the danger she was in at his side in any capacity, he now knows the kind of man he’d be without her, and the only thing he remains concerned with is keeping her happy and as safe as she’ll let him.

He realizes rather belatedly that he hasn’t technically answered Felicity’s question, so as he guides her to one of the other kitchen stools, smiling when she lets her heels fall from her feet with a clatter and a grateful sigh, he says, “I thought maybe you ladies would like to show me how to make latkes.”

There’s a beat in which he turns from daughter to mother, the latter of whom is leaning against the corner between the prep area and the stove, a faraway look in her eyes that outshines the tremulous smile on her face. Oliver knows she’s thinking of last year, of folding her hands in a hospital chapel mere hours after she’d folded her hands in glee at her daughter getting engaged, of how she’d reached for his shaking, still blood covered hand and gotten him to bow his head as she murmured in Hebrew, a language he didn’t know but words he understood nonetheless. But as her eyes drift down to where he’s prepared everything and then glance back up at the two of them, her bright orbs clear and her smile becomes stronger, more celebratory. She steps to Oliver and pats his cheek lovingly. “What a good boy you are, Oliver Queen.”

He ducks his head slightly, but Donna doesn’t really notice, instead looking at Felicity. “You up for helping me light the menorah?”

It becomes a perfect holiday the minute he sees the brightness that reflects in his fiancée’s eyes as she nods, all hints of tiredness disappearing as she slides from her perch at the counter to go retrieve the gleaming silver. He lowers the lights and then his head as the women light the _shamash_ , smiling wordlessly when they pull him into their spontaneous hug.

Even in the darkened loft, the light is blinding, and he feels warm.

He doesn’t protest when Donna takes her hand in his – though he still looks over his shoulder for Felicity, just as he always will – and leads him to the stove. He’s quiet as she prepares the oil, as her hands fly first through the onions and then the potatoes, and listens to her every instruction as he makes his first latke.

He glances again at Felicity, whose smile hasn’t wavered, putting another breath in his lungs, and it may be his first official Chanukah, but this feels amazingly like a miracle. 

(“How do you know when it’s right?” he asks a little bit later as the pancake sizzles in the pan in front of him.

Donna’s answer is gentle, easy. “When you know, you know.”

This time, he doesn’t raise his eyes to Felicity, because he knows without looking that that applies to far more than latkes.)

 

iv.

She crawls out of bed somewhere in the five o’clock hour, leaving her husband buried beneath a comforter, a fleece throw and an uber-comfy blanket somehow still surviving from her days in Boston as she pads down the hall in her tank top and sleep shorts, only _just_ stopping herself from turning the air conditioning down even further, lest she literally freeze the poor man to death.

Given that she’s six months’ pregnant, that’s probably not an ideal start to her job as a parent, killing her child's father.

There are still boxes everywhere in the new house, so like Ivy Town and yet so very different, because _of course_ they’d move a mere ten weeks before delivery _and_ during a reelection campaign. Then again, they’ve never done anything the normal way; he helped save the city and swears she helped save him in the process. She likes to think of it as finding their way together, the road she never knew to look for but that led to the only destination that could have ever mattered.

She steps into what will be their baby’s nursery, smiling at the beautifully handmade crib Thea had had delivered the day after they’d moved in. Felicity had expected the rich angles of cherry wood; what she _hadn’t_ was the few teething marks on the rail, and the worn grooves from when a big brother lowered the side to play with his baby sister before leaving for school.

Oliver has always been about moving forward, but this little piece of his past…it had given Felicity a sense of peace that she’d needed among all the chaos of a changing body and the real, true – if belated – understanding that she and Oliver were having a child.

She’d been slightly in denial when the symptoms sprung up weeks before their wedding, improbably even _more_ in denial when the pregnancy test came up positive three days after they walked down the aisle, but when she’d pressed her hand to her still-flat stomach, the delighted, delirious giggle had beaten out the disbelieving sob that had been working out of her throat the minute the stick turned blue, and she’d felt a bolt of electricity through her veins, equally thrilled and terrified.

She’d sat on the edge of their bed in the honeymoon suite at the same hotel they’d stayed at in Big Sur years before, waiting for him to return from another run on the beach, and had blurted it out as he’d leaned down to give her a quick kiss before heading to the shower. He’d stilled then, eyes blinking open as he’d tried to process the biggest words she’d ever say – syllables even more profound than their recently uttered “I do”s, the sweetest thing she’s probably ever uttered – and then because they are scars and synchronicity and _survival,_ he’d put his hand on her stomach and rubbed his thumb back and forth, whispering, “Hi, baby.”

And for all of the changes and all of the fears and all of the unknowns, it’s that moment she looks back to when she falters -- until the crib comes, and the combination is just what she needs to raise her chin and straighten her spine – as much as she can given her burgeoning belly, anyway – and convince herself that, as they have been in so many other impossible situations, they will begin where the other ends, continue where the other stops, be surefooted where the other falters, they will get through this together.

“We’re lucky, you and I,” she says, now caressing her stomach in the same way her fingers are wandering over the crib. “And though it might be a little bumpy in the beginning, I promise not to forget that, if you promise not to hold anything against me.”

The baby kicks, and Felicity grins. “I love you, too, sweetheart.”

Her smile widens when a voice hoarse with sleep speaks softly from the doorway. “How are my girls this morning?”

“Oh, so it’s a girl this week?” Felicity asks, turning and raising a teasing eyebrow at him.

“This morning, anyway,” he smiles back, dutifully dipping to kiss first her mouth and then her stomach. “Hi, baby,” he whispers, and Felicity just manages to hold back the groan when the baby kicks again – much more enthusiastically, she notes with a slight but amused grimace.

“Did I wake you?” she asks as he straightens, and bless him, he shakes his head with this look of _I’m telling the truth and you should trust me, because would this face lie to you?_

He has. And he hasn’t. It’s all bricks in their journeys to get here, to get wherever they’re going, and time has come to let her appreciate every step. It’s never been a yellow brick road, but it’s their path nonetheless, and even at the hardest turns, she’s somehow always known it’ll be worth it in the end.

“You hungry?” he asks, and she laughs.

“When am I not?”

“More ribs?” he asks, putting a hand on the small of her back – the only thing small about her these days, she feels like – and guiding her down to the kitchen.

“A Monte Cristo sandwich,” she corrects, hoisting herself with overemphasized grunted effort onto one of their kitchen stools as he merely shakes his head with a chuckle and starts making the requested dish, despite the fact it’s barely 5:15 in the morning, he’s got bedhead from here to Central City and is standing in full flannel pajamas because it’s November and she’s got the air conditioning on.

He throws a grin over his shoulder at her, nodding to the eggs he’s beating to cover the bread in. “Finally figured out the eggs.”

(He’s figured out a lot more than that.

_They_ have.

They’ve been married five minutes and been together longer than either of them actually realized it, but it still hits her full force sometimes just how much she loves this man.)

She’s moving before she actually realizes it, and sidles up next to him, curling her smile into his shoulder and breathing deeply before he lifts his arm to curl it around her shoulders even as he deftly switches the spatula to his other hand. “I love you,” she murmurs into his sleeve, and lets her eyes slide shut when he kisses the top of her head.

“I love you, too,” he replies around the sizzle of her sandwich. “Both of you. So much.”

And for all the insanity that’ll come in the next months – the holidays, the baby showers, the birth, the child, the _family_ – that quiet moment is added to her pile of good things, the things she leans on in her weakest moments, and reminds her that the greatest of all of those is him.

 

v.

He’s done a lot of things in his life, many of them unexpected. At the beginning, cooking was certainly one of them.

In the end, though – even though this is the middle, and that thought excites him as though this is the Christmas when he was eight years old again and had just gotten the greatest Lego set ever – it’s one of the things he feels most comfortable doing, being in the kitchen, watching friends become family and family become even better friends.

The kitchen is said to be the heart of the home, certainly, but for him, it’s the place from which he watches his heart _and_ his home.

Everyone he loves is gathered in the sunken living room as he spreads the last of the cheese sauce over the scalloped potatoes and puts them in the oven, save for baby Sara – though she’s now five and insists everyone can just call her by her given name, something the adults in her life are still adjusting to – who is kneeling on one of the kitchen stools, elbows on the raised breakfast bar, watching him as he unrolls the can of crescent rolls, pulling apart the dough and helping her roll them to completion.

He caresses the top of her head in praise and glances down at where Felicity’s lounging on the couch, their ten-month-old being cooed over by grandmother and aunts alike, backlit by twinkling Chanukah candles and Christmas colors. His wife winks up at him across a beautifully decorated table and the smells of a meal he’s spent two days preparing. But where before it would have felt like duty, like responsibility, it is instead a line of happiness he never expected and will never not be grateful for.

 It’s something he never knew he always wanted, and he hopes life never stops surprising him that way.

 Uncle Ollie,” Sara says a minute later, and even the memory of who he was then has dulled with his time and experience as and _with_ all who had come after, “I’m all done.”

“Atta girl,” he says, giving her a light high five. “Will you set the timer if I put them in the other oven?”

She nods enthusiastically, and then races off in her pretty party dress – which Aunt Felicity had, of course, told her to twirl in half a dozen times upon her arrival – to tell her parents how she’d helped with dinner.

(She’s too young to understand how she’s helped so much more than that. But as he looks at the people in his living room, he reaffirms his promise to let each of them know.)

The timers go off ten minutes later, and then the gentle tinkle of baby’s first Christmas toys and the Holiday Classics channel on satellite radio in the background is muted by scraping chairs and “pass the potatoes, please” and “Sara, put your napkin on your lap” and “Mom, don’t hog all the wine”, but when Oliver stands, the room goes quiet.

“To family,” he says simply, raising his wine glass. “Merry Christmas.”

_“Hanukkah Sameach!”_ Felicity says before turning her chin up to accept the kiss she somehow knew was coming.

He’s done a lot of things in his life, mostly unexpected.

This, though, is by far the best.

fin


End file.
